Reading the Series
by Technophobia678
Summary: Done to death, but everyone does it at some point. Percy Jackson's disappeared, but now Jason, Piper and Leo, along with other campers read the Percy Jackson &the Heroes of Olympus series.
1. Introduction

It was a normal day for Camp Half-Blood. Peleus the dragon was snoozing on the hill under the shade of the pine tree. Dryads were giggling and running away from love struck satyrs serenading them. Naiads were weaving baskets under the clear water of the Camps Lake.

There was the usual flurry of activity from the campers. Some of Hermes kids were sneaking into the big house. A couple of Apollo's boys were shooting hoops in the basketball court. The Ares Cabin was being refitted with barbed wire.

Leo Valdez swiped at his forehead. He was completely soaked in sweat, grime and oil, which was understandable since he was hanging upside down holding a wrench.

"Alright come on you damn wretched piece of" he muttered determinedly. Gritting his teeth he pulled hard. This time the blasted bolt obligingly came free.

"Ha!" He gave a triumphant yell and pulled at the damaged plank that was the reason he was upside down in the first place away.

"Finally!" he tilted his head up and bellowed "A little help here?"

"Hang on!" Nyssa shouted back. There was a tug around his waist before he was swiftly lifted out.

"Holy Hephaestus" Leo groaned, stretching and feeling his back pop. He rolled his shoulders a few times trying to ease the strain before unhooking his tool belt from the rope.

"Nice work" Nyssa said supportively, scrutinising the ship. "You got the last one."

Leo grunted. The construction of the Argo II was a mammoth job and they were making decent progress, though setbacks were inevitable. They had made quick work on the hull when a pulley holding celestial bronze snapped, plunging onto the side of the ship and damaging a few boards. It meant that they had to pull them out and redo a side before adding strengthening measures.

The hull of the Argo was one of the major jobs. The Hephaestus Cabin was in overdrive constructing and welding the ship, armour and weapons for the Argo. It was easily the best group for this task, but there were only so many Hephaestus campers and time was an issue. Athena's Cabin helped as much as they could and other Cabins such as Hermes, Apollo and Ares were roped into grunt work. Leo had heard that Annabeth had contacted a Cyclopes called Tyson, who she said was her boyfriend's half-brother who would be arriving to help in a few days. Leo wasn't too sure on that idea but his half siblings seemed delighted and he had been assured he was very different to what he had encountered during his quest almost a month ago.

He stifled a yawn as he surveyed the scurrying campers, all busy with welding guns, hammers and rope. The occasional satyr and dryad offered to help, while steering clear of the sneering harpies who deposited extra supplies before drifting off.

Leo was about to go back to work, before Nyssa cleared her throat, folding her arms. With a dirty bandana and grimy clothes, she looked like a scolding mother who'd been drenched in oil by her wayward offspring.

"You've been at this for hours Valdez. I don't care if you're the senior counsellor, you need a break. That's why we have shifts, remember?"

"Jeez Nyssa" he started only to backpedal when her eyes narrowed and she stepped forward a finger pointing in warning.

"I don't want to hear it. And I do not want to see you here until at least tomorrow morning." She didn't allow him to protest and continued. "Besides, you've got classes your behind in, remember? Archery. Sword fighting. Rock climbing?"

"I'm better with a hammer anyway" he muttered mutinously.

Nyssa softened. "You've been working overtime on this for days. Go have lunch and day the rest of the day off. You need a break. And I'm not taking no for an answer."

Leo snorted, holding his hands up in surrender. In truth he was exhausted, but determined. He was reluctant to do what she was suggesting, but he was starving and he hadn't spent much time with his friends this week.

"Leo…"

"OK, Ok, I surrender" Leo held up his hands out jokingly. "Taking it easy? No problem. I can do that."

"Good" she grinned at him. "Now off. Shoo!"

Leo laughed and walked off. He grimaced at the state of his clothes and hair. A shower was definitely in order.

Thirty minutes later, he bounced out of the Hephaestus cabin, squeaky clean and wearing cleaner clothes. He sighed ruefully; his makeover from Aphrodite was long over.

His stomach was now snarling, reminding him of Festus for a moment. He pushed that aside and debated whether or not to find his friends first or get a bite to eat.

He glanced around himself. Some Demeter girls were tripping up Apollo boys playing basketball. Some of Piper's siblings were giggling around the lake, checking their reflections, but she wasn't with them. Katie Gardner was chasing Travis Stoll, looking murderous.

Side stepping hastily he heard loud clangs of colliding metal coming from the sword fighting arena. He glanced into the arena.

There was Jason, in an orange shirt and shorts, doing battle with one of the Ares kids. He had a new sword from Juno and was giving it a workout.

The Ares kid was good from what Leo's limited encounter with sword battle, but like all Ares kids, all offense, and little defence. Jason's style was very different, different to all of the campers here. He would battle the campers for a bit, getting a feel for the style of his opponent before shifting his movements to counter theirs.

Leo couldn't help but shake his head at his friend's movements. Looking at him now and what he thought he knew about Jason thanks to the Mist, it was amazing the difference.

There was a deafening clang as the Ares kids sword went flying and Jason's sword kissed his throat.

Jason stepped back, lowering his sword. "Good duel."

The Ares camper grunted before marching over to get his sword. "Not bad either, punk. You're as good as Jackson at least."

"Percy Jackson?" Jason cocked his head curiously.

"Hmm" the guy whose name Leo still didn't know grunted an affirmative. "Guy's the best swordsman here." The guys face twisted as though those words were tough to say. Expression sour, he sheathed his sword. "Tell anyone I said that and I'll gut you."

"No problem" Jason assured him. "Thanks again."

The guy nodded curtly before leaving the arena, scowling at Leo as he passed.

Jason brightened at the sight of him. "Hey Leo."

"Hey dude. You done busting heads? I'm starving."

Jason grinned. "Definitely."

Side by side, they started walking to the pavilion.

"How's the ship going?" Jason asked.

Leo snorted. "It's slow. I got kicked out by Nyssa who was threatening bodily harm if I didn't take a break."

Jason laughed. "Scared of a girl Valdez?" he teased.

"A girl who carries wrenches and welding tools? You bet. Besides you're not one to talk. You're terrified of Piper."

Jason bristled. "I am not."

"Annabeth."

"She's scary."

"Touché."

"Alright, whatever. But I think the real reason she kicked you out was because you didn't shower for a couple of days. You stank."

Leo playfully shoved his friend.

Jason abruptly froze, a hand shooting out to stop Leo in his tracks. Startled, Leo followed his gaze…and went very, very still.

A huge wall of dark fur was partially blocking the path. Wide eyes travelled over the darkness, seeing very large paws and a long tail. The beast's head was in the trees lining the path.

"That's" Leo whispered.

"Don't move" Jason breathed, his hand going to his sword. Leo didn't disagree.

Jason moved forward silently, raising his sword. The beast didn't appear to have noticed them. Jason lunged.

_CLANG!_

Out of nowhere a sword appeared to block Jason's swing. Instinctively Jason parried and a figure jumped out of the way.

"Hey!" an annoyed voice shouted. A peeved boy pushed back against Jason's sword. "Easy!"

"Woof!" the head of the beast pulled out of the trees to investigate the commotion. Leo could only stand and stare at what looked like an enormous black dog, with bright eyes, a huge pink tongue hanging out of its mouth and a large sparkly collar around its neck.

"That's a hellhound!" Jason shouted.

"It's fine" the younger boy insisted, shoving hard to force Jason step back. "It's just Mrs O'Leary."

Leo blinked. "Mrs O'Leary?"

"She's fine, she's friendly" the younger boy insisted. He studied the pair warily. The boys wickedly black sword was gleaming. He was pale and had dark eyes and silky dark hair. He wore dark jeans and jacket, his shirt black with a dancing skeleton on it.

Jason lowered his sword slightly, but didn't sheath it. He was still scrutinising the boy and the giant dog warily.

"Who are you?"

"Nico DiAngelo, son of Hades" he replied, watching the older boy.

Leo blinked. That name was familiar. Jason obviously recognised it too, because he frowned, looking at the curious hellhound briefly, before looking back at Nico.

"Your Annabeth's friend right?"

"Yes" Nico said, dark eyes on the two. "Who're you?"

Jason lowered his sword completely. "Jason Grace. I'm a son of" he hesitated. "Jupiter. Zeus."

Nico stepped back looking startled. "Zeus? Wait Grace? You related to Thalia Grace?"

"She's my sister."

Nico's eyes widened in disbelief.

"Leo Valdez. Hephaestus" Leo said brightly, feeling increasingly discomfited by the presence of the mega dog.

Nico sighed and sheathed his sword. The dog (what kind of name was Mrs O'Leary for such an animal?) leaned over to snuffle his shoulders.

Nico patted her snout absently before addressing the other two.

"I've obviously got a lot to catch up on" Nico said finally, shaking his head.

"So err-Mrs O'Leary?" Leo said as a prompt.

"Huh? Oh-she belongs to a friend of mine." Nico's eyes darkened. "I'm taking care of her for the minute."

Jason and Leo blinked. "A friend?"

Nico grimaced. "Percy Jackson. He went missing a few weeks ago."

"Oh we know that" Leo said, waving his arm. "Just don't get the big dog part."

"She's a hellhound" Nico said with a shrug. "One of the only hellhounds that's friendly to other people. Percy inherited her when her old master died."

"Inherited her?" Leo repeated.

Mrs O'Leary whined. Her head drooped and nuzzled the younger boys shoulder. Nico scratched her behind the ears.

"Long story" Nico said distractedly. "I need to talk to Annabeth. I'll see you. Come on Mrs O'Leary." He whistled and the giant dog obediently trotted after him.

Leo broke the silence. "Well damn" he said faintly. "That was one big dog."

Jason didn't say anything. His face was pensive.

"Dude you ok?"

Jason blinked and looked at Leo. "Yeah. It's just…I keep getting compared with him."

"Him?"

"Percy Jackson" Jason confirmed what he'd been thinking. "It's weird you know? Coming here, with no memories, exchanged for this guy who's the leader of the Camp. I keep hearing about the guy, getting compared with him and I know nothing about him and whether or not he'll survive the Roman camp. Just bits and pieces-him being the best swords person and owning a hellhound." He scuffed the ground with his boot.

"Is that why you want to know about him?" Leo asked.

Jason sighed and looked away "That and…it makes me wonder if I've got people where I'm from, worried about me, searching for me, like people here are for Percy." He shrugged ruefully. "I kind of envy the guy."

"Don't be stupid" Leo said uncomfortable. Feelings', talking about them, was _so _not his thing, but Jason was his friend and he needed one. "You're my friend and I've only really known you for a month. I'd be looking for you and I know the beauty queen would be too. Being in a place for twelve years? I'd say they're scouring the country for you."

Jason gave an embarrassed, but genuine smile. "Thanks man." He cleared his throat, before smiling.

"I think that Percy guy's crazier than you are though" Leo said to move the conversation away from awkward topics. "That dog's huge!"

Jason laughed. "Now's that's a story I'd like to hear."

"Hear what?"

The two boys turned round to see Piper coming over. Wearing jeans and a long sleeved white blouse, she looked very pretty and comfortable in her own skin.

"Hey Piper" Jason gave her a bright smile, which made her smile widen.

"Hey beauty queen." Leo greeted. "And we were wondering how Percy Jackson got a hellhound as a pet."

Piper's eyes which had narrowed at Leo's greeting widened. "A _hellhound_?" she repeated in disbelief.

"Mrs O'Leary" he confirmed.

Piper stared at him and then Jason, who grinned and shrugged. Piper could only shake her head and mutter _"boys."_

"I think I could like the guy" Jason chuckled at Piper's expression. "It's a shame no-one really talks about him."

"That's because of Annabeth" Piper frowned. "People are afraid of upsetting her and considering I've only her a month I don't really blame them. I did ask her about Percy but she's not really willing to talk about him."

The conversation was interrupted when Leo's stomach let out an almighty roar that sounded more appropriate for a drakon. Both Jason and Piper gaped before howling with laughter.

"Ah shut it" Leo blushed as his stomach continued to growl insistently.

"I was planning on getting some lunch" Piper said eyes bright. "You guys coming?"

"Sure" Jason agreed, slinging an arm around Leo's shoulder. "Come on Leo, you've got a monster to slay."

Leo snorted and Piper giggled.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare groaned in satisfaction.

With ruthless pleasure she tossed her irritating school skirt carelessly into the corner. She sighed contently as she shimmied into her well-worn jeans and favourite green sweater. She pulled her hair out of the jumper before carelessly tying it back.

She wrinkled her nose as she grabbed her ridiculous uniform and dumped it unceremoniously on the bed. Really Clarion Academy was not for her.

She studied her cave. For a cave, it was pretty awesome. There was a large bed, with numerous sheets and drapes around the place. Glowing lamps, gifts from Apollo kept the place illuminated and there were books and CDs scattered around that she could listen on her battery CD player as much as she liked, as Apollo graciously kept her well stocked with batteries. There were many blank and partially done art works around the cave along with scattered art supplies.

Her eyes took in a painting she had been close to finishing. It was one of Percy, one of her favourite subjects. It was a scene from the Titan War in the throne room where Percy handed the Pandora _pithos _to Lady Hestia. The surrounding thrones were shadowed, dark and forbidding. The only light came from the hearth in the centre. Percy was crouched in front of the dying hearth holding the jar towards the seemingly small child. His face was in profile but the emotions in his face and body language were visible. Determination, deference, understanding. Hope. Hestia's hands were outstretched, about to take hold of the jar, the expression one of pride and contentment.

Her throat tightened as she took in the portrait. She couldn't bring herself to finish it. Not yet. She'd taken to hiding it in case Annabeth dropped by but had lifted the drapes to study it. Poor Annabeth was devastated. She'd scoured the country for clues of his disappearance and now, knowing that Percy was somewhere in San Francisco-where her family lived-and not being able to go to him and not even sure if he even remembered her was like a poisoned thorn in her chest.

She took in his features. Percy Jackson was a very good looking guy, she knew that. Just because she had sworn off men doesn't mean she couldn't look, right? And Percy would always have a special place in her heart. He had been the one to introduce her to the world of gods and monsters, who proved she wasn't insane. It helped that he was also sweet, loyal and incredibly brave and would throw himself into battle to protect his friends, including her. He was also lazy, stubborn and completely clueless about relationships. She knew she would always feel a little wistful where Percy Jackson was concerned, but he and Annabeth Chase where made for each other. Even if the pair had taken forever to realise it. And now for her to lose that and may never get it back…

She dropped the drape back over the portrait. Enough. They would find Percy. And he and Annabeth would get over this and become stronger. And just maybe, they would prove to be the exception and have a happy ending.

"Very nice painting" said a voice behind her.

She let out a shriek and whirled around. Some Oracle she made. Chuckling at her reaction the Sun God grinned at her, wearing a simple white T-shirt and jeans.

"Lord Apollo" she gasped, clutching her chest. "You scared me!"

"A thousand apologies my favourite Oracle" he chuckled. "I couldn't resist."

"No I bet you couldn't" she sighed and smiled at him. Apollo was irrepressible and it was one of the things she liked about him.

"What can I do for you Lord Apollo?"

"Just checking in. It's been the first time I've been able to sneak away. Zeus has been very…watchful about the gods' movements. But if my baby sister can sneak away, why can't I?" he winked at her.

"Everything's fine. I had a prophecy for the new campers and they managed to fulfil it and save Hera. And we know that Gaia is the new enemy." She hesitated. "Do you know if Percy's alright?" Rachel couldn't help but ask.

The Sun God's face darkened. "He's alive Rachel and that's all I can say. Hera's done a bold move and it could pretty easily backfire. If we're to stop the giants, we're going to need all of our kids involved, on both sides. Jackson's a strong kid so I wouldn't get to worried about him and I'd lay odds that he's definitely one of the seven from the Prophecy."

She sighed and nodded.

"Speaking of" Apollo added. He held out his hands and a package appeared out of nowhere. "Not nearly as good as Hermes but since he's grounded for the minute, I can make do." He gave them to her with a flourish.

Intrigued, she took hold of the package. It was quite heavy. She glanced at Apollo and he nodded. She set the package on the bed and opened it.

Books. They looked like novels that you'd buy in a bookshop. Baffled, she glanced at the Sun God who nodded encouragingly. He seemed a little more jittery than usual.

Her breath caught as she read the first title. _Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. _She flicked through the titles, seeing _The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, the Last Olympian _and finally_, Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero._

Stunned, she lifted her head to meet the god's eyes.

"Your friends adventures recorded by the muses" Apollo answered without her asking. "All heroes' adventures are recorded. Some of them are so famous or have done Olympus such a great service; they're recorded by the muses themselves as myths and released to both godly and the mortal world. It used to be by word of mouth and then by written word. Some can get convoluted after so many years, but since these are the originals, they're likely the most accurate."

Rachel had to force herself to speak. "But…why?"

Apollo just shrugged. "I just felt it was important." He was about to say more before he abruptly swung his head to the ceiling.

"I gotta go" he announced. "Have as many people as you wish to read them, it should prove interesting. Ciao!" and she was forced to avert her eyes as he disappeared in a scorching white light.

"And he just left?" Thalia said incredulously.

Rachel had tracked down Annabeth to show her the books. She had been in the Big House talking to Thalia, who had returned to camp to discuss the new threat, Grover, who had also returned to hear the news and Chiron.

"Yeah. I don't even know why he gave me them, he just said he thought it would be useful" Rachel shook her head.

"Very interesting" Chiron murmured, studying one of the books. "It is impressive that Percy has been elevated to a myth already. It appears as though these as written from his point of view."

"I don't think he'll like this" Grover mused, tugging his goatee in thought.

Thalia snorted. "I wouldn't. And it looks like this one alternates between Jason, Piper and Leo's point of view" she added, as she studied the index of the last, biggest book, _The Lost Hero_.

Annabeth, who had been silent until now, forcefully slapped the book she was holding onto the table.

"I don't understand why he gave you these Rachel. What's the point? It doesn't help us contact Percy, or speed up the construction of the Argo, or help us defeat Gaia. What's the point in them?"

"If Lord Apollo said to read them, he must have a reason" Chiron said gently. "Besides the new heroes, who have begun their own myth, may be intrigued to learn of Percy's. I would imagine they will meet him at some point in the future."

Annabeth's features tightened.

"Why don't we all read them?" Rachel suggested tentatively. "I have to say, I've always been curious about some of the things Percy's done. And we could go through the new book to see if there's anything new we can learn about the giants."

Annabeth stared at the table before abruptly standing and walking off.

"Oh dear" Chiron sighed.

Thalia stood up, looking resolved. "Alright, we're going to read these books. Rachel, go wait by the pine tree, it should be a quiet place to read in peace. I'll get Jason and his friends. Grover can you talk to Annabeth? I would but-"

"I'll go" Grover gave a mournful bray and stood also brushing down his t-shirt. He absently bit into a Coke can.

"Chiron are you coming?" Rachel asked as they others left.

The old centaur gave her a weary smile. "Thank you Rachel, but I think this intervention is not meant for me. "

Grover trotted out of the Big House after Annabeth. She was stalking down towards the beach and no-one was foolish enough to get in her way. He followed her, keeping back a few steps.

He really didn't know what to say. Percy was gone, on his own in a potentially dangerous situation with no memories of them. It was enough for him to start gnawing on any furniture around him. He'd nearly consumed his reed pipes more than once since he'd heard the news. Their best friend was gone and they couldn't help him. If it was bad for him, it must be killing Annabeth.

His other best friend had halted on the beach, staring out at the ocean, her fists clenched. Her blonde hair was being tossed around by the breeze.

"Are you going to join me or just stand there Grover?" she asked without turning around.

Grover moved to stand beside her, before wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She stiffened a little but didn't move away.

"How are you?" he asked.

She didn't answer. She didn't have to. Her face was a little paler than usual, with dark smudges under her eyes. It was clear she wasn't taking care of herself very well.

"Sorry I've only just gotten back" Grover said instead.

She shook her head. "You've got loads to do Grover. Don't be" she turned to look at him. "Thanks for trying to find him."

"You don't have to thank me for that" Grover shook his head.

They were quiet for a minute.

"The others are going to read those books now" Grover said quietly.

Annabeth took a shaky breath. "What's the point Grover? It's not going to bring him back. He don't know where he is, if he's alright, if he's…" she trailed off. "We don't even know if he remembers us or if he's the same person we know. And instead of finding him, we're stuck here until the summer at _least_."

"Hey stop that" Grover pulled her into a hug. "You're going to drive yourself crazy thinking like that."

"I miss him" she whispered faintly into his chest.

"I miss him too" he said softly, holding her tight. "But Percy's one of the strongest people I know. He'll survive this camp, we know that. And he's way too stubborn to let Hera get away with taking his memories for long. He'll remember us, if only to drive her insane."

She managed a faint chuckle at that. "It's just-frustrating. Percy went against the rules, going on a quest just to save me. And I can't do the same for him."

"Yeah but this is different and you know it. He was supposed to be on that quest, Zoe was just stubborn. And this isn't as a quest."

"It wouldn't stop Percy" she muttered stubbornly.

"Yeah well there's a reason he always had you with him on a mission. You're the brains of the operation, Percy's not exactly known for thinking things through" he said dryly.

She actually managed to laugh a little.

Grover took a deep breath as they parted. He wasn't the one to be reassuring; in times of crisis, it was Percy or Annabeth that were the ones who encouraged him. But Percy was gone and Annabeth needed the encouragement this time.

"Percy will be fine" he repeated, reassuring himself as much as her. "We'll get him back. But he won't be happy if we don't take care of ourselves because we're worried about him."

"Are you trying to tell me something?" she narrowed her eyes at him playfully.

He grinned at her.

"Do you want to go to this book reading thing? Just think we can find out what Percy actually thinks about us!"

"Are you sure you really want to know?" Annabeth said wryly. Grover privately agreed.

"We actually have a book written about us?" Piper said incredulously.

Thalia nodded. "Big book. It alternates between your points of view." She nodded her head to the others.

"Seriously?" Jason looked disturbed.

"Yeah sorry" Thalia chuckled. "If you think that's bad Percy has five books all to himself."

"Jeez, how much trouble was that guy in?" Leo asked in disbelief, clearly trying not to think about the disturbing thought of his thoughts being on paper for all to see. That's what Piper was thinking anyway.

"A lot" Thalia looked a little wistful, clearly far away. She had known Percy for years after all. "The titles talk about his big adventures, so it should be interesting. It'll also help you guys learn about the recent history of the camp as well. Maybe even brush up your knowledge of monsters."

"Oh gee. Great" Leo said unenthusiastically. Piper rolled her eyes and looked over to Jason. Their eyes met and it was clear he was intrigued. She had to admit, so was she, though the idea of people reading her thoughts was more than a little unnerving. And uncomfortable.

"So you're going to read all of the books?" Jason asked.

"Apollo wouldn't have risked coming back to earth to give these books to Rachel unless it was important" Thalia's brow was furrowed in a way that reminded Piper of Jason. "I don't understand what it can achieve other than stressing Annabeth, but…"

"How is Annabeth?" Piper asked.

Thalia grimaced. "Grover's with her. I'm hoping goat boy will cheer her up."

"Goat boy?"

"He's a satyr" she shrugged. "So are you coming along?"

"Sure" Jason said quickly and Thalia smiled at him. Piper knew he wanted to spend time with his long lost big sister who had only arrived back to the camp a couple of days ago and who was incredibly busy.

"Err yeah, why not?" Leo didn't look terribly excited, but he followed them anyway.

Piper walked a little behind the Graces to study them. They looked completely unlike. They were both tall and had the same blue eyes, but that was it. Jason's hair was blonde, Thalia's blue black. Thalia looked Mediterranean, while Jason's features were more defined and regal…she inwardly snorted, Roman like.

She shared a quick grin with Leo before looking away. Leo bless his irritating socks, was a great friend. The joker was a good guy and was working super hard on the Argo II. Piper would help if she knew anything about construction, but aside from grunt work, she was of little use. She was however working on being senior counsellor and learning from Annabeth knife fighting. Camp was so comfortable despite the stress of the looming future…it felt like home.

They made their way up the hill where the pine tree loomed in the sky, with the snoozing dragon wrapped around it. Piper was a little leery about it, but most of the older campers were unconcerned about it.

There were people already on the hill a few metres away from the top. She recognised Rachel the Oracle, sitting cross-legged on the ground. She was chatting to a boy in dark clothes who carried a deadly looking black sword. Also there was to her surprise, Clarisse of the Ares cabin and her boyfriend Chris from Hermes. Clarisse was the senior counsellor for Ares and she and Piper got on fairly well despite her somewhat abrasive personality.

Rachel smiled at the newcomers.

"Hey Death Breath" Thalia greeted the dark boy, who scowled. "Guys, this is"

"We've met" Jason interrupted. "Nico DiAngelo" he added to Piper.

"Piper McLean, nice to meet you." She shook hands with the younger boy. He studied her with intense dark eyes that seemed to look right through her.

"Where's your friend?" Leo asked.

"She's in the forest chasing the scorpions" Nico shrugged.

"Oh, is this the hellhound you guys were talking about?"

"Mrs O'Leary" Leo said helpfully.

Piper tried to imagine a fearsome beast from Hades called Mrs O'Leary. It was a difficult task.

"So you're Roman huh?" Nico asked Jason looking at him curiously.

"Yeah" Jason ran a hand through his hair. "Long story."

"Annabeth gave me the basics anyway."

"What are you guys doing here?" Thalia asked the couple.

"They overheard me telling Nico about the stories" Rachel shrugged.

Clarisse didn't look happy but Chris shrugged. "Seemed interesting."

"Hey guys!" a satyr clearly younger than Coach Hedge and Annabeth were walking up the hill.

"Hey goat boy!" Thalia gave him a hug before exchanging looks with Annabeth. Annabeth gave her a brief smile. "Guys' this is Grover Underwood."

"Nice to meet you" the satyr said sincerely holding out his hand. Piper smiled at him as she shook his hand. He seemed very different to Hedge and judging from the slight grins the boys were sporting as they shook his hand, they were thinking the same thing.

"So are we going to read then?" Rachel asked hesitantly, also looking at Annabeth.

Clarisse looked annoyed, but she wasn't saying much either. Though Piper knew she didn't much like Percy Jackson, she respected him and wasn't about to bad mouth him around Annabeth. Well, not yet at least.

"So in order, it's Percy's books, and then yours?" Nico asked for affirmation.

"Yes" Rachel nodded, leafing through what looked like the first one. "I think there's a spell on the books. When I look at it, it's in English, but when Chris looked at it, it was Greek. It might change to suit the person reading it."

"Can I see?" Jason asked, holding out his hand.

Rachel handed it to him and he studied the back, brow furrowed.

"Latin" he announced.

"So it changes for each person depending on what they're fluent in?" Piper queried, looking at the book Jason was holding. She'd only been here a month, but she was quickly improving in Ancient Greek, though she wasn't sure if she was up to translating fluently.

"It looks like it" Annabeth murmured, looking at the cover of one of the books. She seemed pretty depressed, though she wore a small, sad smile. She sat down next to Rachel. The satyr Grover sat down on her other side. Thalia sat down gracefully next to him, letting her bow down behind her carefully. Jason opted to sit next to her, so she and Leo followed suit. The boy Nico sat beside Rachel and Chris and his reluctant girlfriend followed.

Situated between her two best friends, it struck Piper at how ridiculous this seemed. They were with a group of people, some she didn't know and others she only knew a little, all settling in to read books based on another campers life. Then they were going to read a book based on herself and her two friends. They were sitting outside in the middle of winter, relatively warm for the time of the year, under the shade of a pine tree that had a dragon snoozing under it. It seemed a little crazy…even for demigods.

"So…" Leo started. "This is about your dude Percy Jackson?"

"Yes" Rachel looked around. "It's…his myth basically. So far. Just like your book has only begun. Your myth has only started and as you continue, your myths will be written down."

Assuming we survive our adventures first, Piper thought, but elected not to say that.

Jason cleared his throat. "So…should we get started?"

Rachel looked at Annabeth for permission, before taking a deep breath and picking up a gold coloured novel. It had a picture of a Minotaur on it.

"The first book is called The Lightning Thief."

A/N

Schools out + no jobs to be found = too much time on my hands.

Ok, this is a typical 'reading the series' plot that I've always been meaning to do. It was a tossup between Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, but I got back into the PJ series with a vengeance. Trying not to make it too alike others, but it's such an overdone plot, I don't think I've succeeded. Ah well. Let me know what you all think, hint, hint.


	2. I Accidently Vaporise my Maths Teacher

"The Lightning Thief?" Leo echoed in confusion. "How can you steal lightning?"

Jason tilted his head to the side. "Does it have to do with Dad?" he asked curiously. "Lightning is his symbol after all."

"Someone stole Zeus's symbol?" Piper queried, stunned. "Someone has a death wish."

"How about you all shut up and listen instead of coming up with theories?" Clarisse said irritably.

"I'll read the back of the book first" Rachel interjected hastily, turning the book over.

"**Look I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek God."**

"Amen brother" Leo nodded in agreement, a hand over his heart. Clarisse narrowed her eyes at him, but the other demigods present were nodding in agreement

"It's tough" Jason agreed.

"Throw out the son part and it's a fact of life" Piper mused, pulling her hair over her shoulder to study it, making a face.

"It's not all bad, all of the time" Annabeth said quietly.

"No it's not" Thalia agreed. "But it's something we all think about at some point."

"Speak for yourself" Clarisse muttered mutinously.

"**I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual**" Rachel read on.

"**Until I accidently vaporised my maths teacher."** Rachel trailed off in disbelief.

There was a shout of laughter. Leo had to hold his sides in. Annabeth smiled slightly.

"I heard about this!" Nico exclaimed, face full of mirth. "I never got the details."

"S-she must h-have been a really awful teacher" Leo gasped, struggling to breath.

"She was" Grover said empathically, with a shudder.

"Did you have her as a teacher too?" Chris asked the satyr eagerly.

"Yes" Grover shuddered again.

Chortling, Jason fought to compose himself. "Can you keep going Rachel?" he asked the Oracle who was shaking her head.

"**That's when things **_**really**_** started going wrong."**

"I bet" Piper murmured. Jason snickered.

"**Now I spend my time fighting with swords, battling monsters with my friends and generally trying to stay alive."**

"It beats math" Nico said with absolute seriousness. Leo whooped in agreement. Annabeth rolled her eyes.

"**This is the one where Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks I've stolen his lightning bolt-and making Zeus angry is a **_**very bad idea**_**."**

"So someone really stole Dad's lightning bolt?" Jason said incredulously.

"Percy didn't steal it, did he?" Piper asked bewildered.

"No" Annabeth said flatly. "He was framed."

"Who'd be nuts enough to steal from the King of the Gods?" Leo wondered aloud. "Talk about wanting to go out with a bang…."

Thalia glanced at Annabeth, who nodded back at her. Thalia clenched her hand around the mace can that hid her magical spear.

"You know who stole it, I take it?" Piper asked the older campers.

"We were there" Annabeth said shortly, pushing a curl behind her ear.

Leo groaned. "Ah man. This is like going to the movies and everyone with you knows the ending. This sucks. We're the only ones who don't know what's gonna happen."

"I wasn't there" Rachel offered. "I don't know what happened."

"Me either" Nico interjected.

"Whatever" Leo grumbled.

"**Can Percy find the lightning bolt before a fully-fledged war of the gods erupts?"** Rachel read.

"Yes" Nico deadpanned.

"Is this really a novel?" Annabeth suddenly asked. "And not just a recording of events?"

"I don't know" Rachel frowned. "It's like a book you get at the shops. I think when Lord Apollo said the mortal world would learn of Percy's myth, he meant that they'd sell the books to the public."

"So your friend's life is getting sold as a fantasy novel?" Leo burst out laughing. "That's brilliant."

"Your life too you know" Rachel pointed out and Leo shut up. "Yeah I guess so." She shook her head ruefully. "Percy's going to be thrilled."

"Ecstatic" Annabeth smirked a little. "Mind you I'm not looking forward to it either."

"Tell me about it" Grover groaned.

"The author is a Rick Riordan" Rachel reported. "So he's either a mortal writer directed by the muses themselves or the muses wrote it under a false name. I'll have to keep an eye out for this author and see if he's written anything else."

"You think he's written other books on demigods' lives?" Piper asked, disconcerted.

"It's possible" Rachel shrugged.

"Oh gods" Thalia muttered.

"They're not going to use our names and stuff right?" Leo asked in alarm. "That's gotta be copyright. I mean whatever happened to 'changing the names and identities to protect the innocent?'"

"You're not innocent" Piper smiled serenely as Leo glared.

"Ok enough" Rachel laughed. "Can I read now?"

"Sure." "Sorry." A few chorused. Rachel seized the quiet as a chance to get started and cleared her throat.

**"I Accidentally Vaporize my Maths Teacher,"**

Snickers and laughter rang out at the title again. Leo, Nico and Chris cheered.

**Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.**

"We know dude" Leo sighed in mock exasperation, while some of the girls werelooking at him with the actual emotion. Jason shook his head.

**If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:**

"Oh gods. Percy giving advice?" Nico sounded alarmed. Thalia snorted.

**close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

"Would that work?" Piper asked curiously.

"Kind of" Annabeth explained. "If you're not aware of what you are, you're fooled by the Mist and your scent isn't as strong. Once you learn what you are, it's easier to see through the Mist and your scent becomes stronger, more noticeable to monsters."

"Are you saying we stink?" Leo asked her and shrank closer to Piper at Annabeth's glare. Rachel continued.

**Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

"Now that's true" Thalia muttered grimly. Annabeth nodded solemnly. Jason rubbed his tattoos absently.

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**

"That's a little condescending" Rachel interrupted herself with a frown.

"True though" Chris pointed out.

**But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before**_**they**_** sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

"That's true" Annabeth murmured. "That could be dangerous." She frowned up at the sky.

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

"Again, does anyone find it ironic that Percy's telling people to be careful?" Nico asked.

"Yes" Thalia stated succinctly.

"We don't know the guy" Jason pointed out unnecessarily.

"Read a few chapters and you'll know what we mean" Thalia assured him.

**My name is Percy Jackson.**

"Nice to meet you" Leo said cheerfully. Annabeth's eyes dropped back to the ground. Thalia slipped her hand on top of hers to give it a squeeze.

**I'm twelve years old. Until a**_**few**___**months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a****private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

**Am I a troubled kid?**

"Yes" Thalia, Nico, and Clarisse said as one. Grover frowned.

**Yeah. You could say that.**

"Hah, he agrees with you." Leo laughed.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

"Sounds like something you'd like" Thalia murmured to Annabeth. She nodded.

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

Annabeth huffed. "Seaweed Brain" she muttered. Thalia laughed softly. Grover smiled.

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.**

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair.**

"Oh!" Piper said in comprehension, eyes widening. "Is that Chiron?"

Annabeth nodded.

**He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armour and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

"I think he'd like to hear that" Annabeth murmured to herself.

**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

There were snorts from the older campers.

"Unlikely?" Jason asked shrewdly.

"Very" Nico confirmed.

**Boy was I wrong.**

"This should be good" Chris grinned and Clarisse frowned at him.

**See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

Leo, Nico, Jason and Thalia roared with laughter. Rachel started giggling. Piper snickered while Grover let out a few bleat like laughs. Clarisse's lips twitched. Annabeth shook her head towards the sky.

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. **

The giddiness levels managed to increase after this to even higher levels.

"Oh gods" Nico wheezed, his pale face turning red from laughter.

"I like this guy" Leo declared through fits of giggles. Jason bobbed his head in agreement.

**And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

"Ah don't be like that" Leo whined.

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

"He's doomed from the start" Thalia deadpanned. Grover just sighed.

**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

"Eww!" Rachel wrinkled her nose in disgust. The other girls looked pissed off, Annabeth fingering her bronze knife. Grover blushed.

**Grover was an easy target.**

Now he frowned.

**He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

"Tell me what you really think Perrrrcy" Grover bleated in annoyance while the rest laughed at him. Thalia patted his shoulder, smirking.

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs.**

"Lucky goat" Leo muttered enviously.

**He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

Grover blushed again while Thalia groaned at him. Annabeth shook her head smiling, while the rest snickered.

"Way to keep a low profile goat boy" Thalia shook her head.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.**

"Please do" Thalia suggested, eyes narrowed. Annabeth agreed.

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

"Wimp" Clarisse shook her head. "You should deck her. That'll stop her."

"I don't like fighting if I can avoid it" Grover shrugged. Clarisse rolled her eyes.

"I guess Hedge is one of a kind among satyrs then? Leo muttered to his friends.

"We don't know any other satyrs, but you're probably right" Piper whispered back. Jason nodded.

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.**

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

"Percy on the other hand, doesn't care if it's a god or mortal who's annoying him, he'll fight both" Nico announced. Annabeth sighed.

**"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there.**

Clarisse nodded and Thalia looked vaguely disappointed. But it wasn't in Percy to hit a girl unless its weapons practise or when the girl in question was trying to kill him.

**In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

"Dun dun dun" Leo muttered dramatically. Piper elbowed him.

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

Annabeth smiled sadly.

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a**_**stele,**___**for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting,**

"Ok now I'm not so sure about the guy" Leo said tactlessly and received a couple of evil glares for his trouble.

**but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

"Why?" Rachel asked in disbelief.

"Judging from the title, it has something to do with a monster, but we won't know until you keep reading" Nico informed her seriously. She blushed and glared at the son of Hades.

**Mrs Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. **

"Urgh" Leo shuddered. Old women and black leather. Bad, bad mental image. Piper gave him a disgusted look.

**She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

"I wonder what she did to the poor person?" Thalia mused darkly. Grover shuddered all the way down to his cloven feet.

**From her first day, Mrs Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

This statement made people snort.

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you**_**shut up**_**?"**

**It came out louder than I meant it to.**

"Oops" Leo snickered.

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

**My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

There was a collective shudder.

"Eugh do we have to?" Leo asked plaintively.

"That's…prophetic" Rachel said darkly, glancing at Thalia and Annabeth.

"Great dad" Jason muttered. Whatever his father's faults, he at least had never tried to eat him. As far as he knew, anyway.

"Didn't Zeus to that to Athena to stop her from being born?" Piper asked, looking at the Athena child in the group.

Jason inwardly groaned. Well, there goes _that _hope…note to self, try to stay on dad's good side as much as possible.

Annabeth nodded. "He heard a prophecy saying a child of his born from the Titan Metis would one day be more powerful than he, and so turned her into a fly and swallowed her when she was pregnant. My mother kept growing in Zeus until he started complaining of headaches-"

"Can we keep going?" Jason pleaded, feeling a little ill. Annabeth shrugged and Piper grinned apologetically at him and patted his hand. He felt a slight pang when she stopped and he quickly supressed it.

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

**"And he**_**did**___**this because ..."**

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god,**

Annabeth shook her head. _You have to do better than that Seaweed Brain,_ she thought morosely.

**And—"**

**"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.**

"How could he miss that?" Piper asked.

Annabeth surfaced from her thoughts. "I don't think he actually chewed…I think he just swallowed them whole."

"Oh. Lovely. Forget I asked."

**And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

"Hear hear" Rachel muttered.

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

"History lesson 101 for demigods by Percy Jackson" Nico deadpanned.

Leo laughed. He thought he could learn to like the younger sarcastic son of Hades.

**Some snickers from the group.**

**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

"It might be here" Leo muttered. "Becoming a monster slayer; theoretical and practical applications required."

Jason stifled a grin and Piper swallowed a giggle.

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed her face even brighter red than her hair.**

Grover grinned. Thalia chuckled.

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

"Or horse ears" Jason said dryly, because it just had to be said. Leo made a face at him; he'd been about to say the same thing.

**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. **

"So if he were to eat a mortal or a demigod then?" Nico trailed off at the looks levelled at him by the others. Rachel shuddered convulsively before continuing hurriedly.

**The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming.**

**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

"More than that" Annabeth murmured softly, eyes distant.

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**

**I wanted to get angry; this guy pushed me so hard.**

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armour and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever**_**lived,**___**and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

"Fun" Leo deadpanned, sarcasm dripping off the words.

"Speak for yourself" Annabeth stated, folding her arms.

"Even doing that in English?" Thalia said sceptically. "Even if he knew the answer, he couldn't spell it."

Annabeth sighed.

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be**_**as good;**___**he expected me to be**_**better.**___**And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

"I know that feeling" Leo muttered.

"That's not your excuse, you just don't bother to study" Piper told him. Leo shrugged.

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

"It's freaky to think that he could have been" Piper mused. Unable to help herself, she glanced at Thalia feeling a slight chill run done her spine at the thought that Jason's sister would remain the same age forever, be around long after everyone else on the hill was gone. She wondered if the spunky older girl would ever act like the world weary centaur after seeing her mortal friends perish due to time. She hoped not.

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

"Sounds like the gods are angry" Jason frowned, wondering if the lightning bolt had been stolen already. Leo and Piper were right, who would steal Zeus's lightning bolt? The Titans were stirring around this time, he was fairly sure. But it was unlikely they could enter Olympus undetected. A sympathetic demigod maybe, who used Percy Jackson's discovery as a half-blood as a cover, perhaps?

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

Piper shifted uncomfortably, feeling a little embarrassed.

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from**_**that**___**school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

"You're not loser freaks" Annabeth scowled fiercely.

"Did it work?" Thalia asked Grover.

"No" Grover sighed.

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

"We all know that" Nico told the book seriously.

"Nothing like an honest man" Rachel playfully bumped shoulders with Annabeth, who smiled faintly.

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

Grover looked embarrassed while the others laughed.

"Sorry Perce" he muttered.

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again.**

I know that feeling, Piper mused. It seemed that she had something in common with the missing demigod.

Leo was quiet, his thoughts on his own mother.

**I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

"Percy's mom is awesome" Thalia said wistfully. Nico and Rachel nodded in agreement.

"How is she?" Grover asked hesitantly. Thalia frowned in sudden consternation; she'd forgotten about how Percy's poor mother must be feeling about Percy's disappearance.

Annabeth sighed, shoulders slumping. "She's not great. Paul's trying to help as much as he can but…"she trailed off.

The atmosphere became sombre and Rachel continued reading, subdued.

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

Leo snorted at the mental image, distracted from his earlier thoughts. It would be a cool side project to do actually.

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

"Little brat" Thalia hissed. There was a crackle of electricity around her and Grover had to lean away. Annabeth's eyes were the colour of storm clouds and she was fingering her knife with increased vigour as if contemplating where it'd would most likely hurt.

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

"Lovely description" Chris said sarcastically. Nico absently tapped the ground, forming a little skeleton dog that looked suspiciously like a hellhound.

**I tried to stay cool. The school counsellor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." **

"Exercise in futility that" Thalia said darkly. Compared to her, Percy wasn't really hot-headed, though her temper had improved since she'd join the Hunters. But if someone went after Percy's friends or pushed him too hard, the results were-explosive.

**But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

"What did he do?" Leo asked interestedly, leaning forward.

**Mrs Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

"Water control" Jason murmured. Like his power over air and Leo's with fire. With over three quarters of the earth covered in water, a son of the sea god would be a formidable opponent.

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

"A little more than you think" Nico added helpfully.

Annabeth gave him an irritated look.

"You're talking to a book."

Nico shrugged unrepentantly. "This way he's not around to strangle me for pissing him off."

"Percy strangled you?" Rachel said incredulously. Everyone else was also looking at him completely thrown by this little piece of information.

"What did you do?" Thalia asked him, baffled. Percy would only go postal like that in _extreme _situations.

"Long story" Nico said, looking a little sheepish.

Slowly, Rachel went back to the book. Annabeth was studying Nico, who was avoiding her gaze. Leo and Jason exchanged glances. Thalia eyed Nico shrewdly, but said nothing.

**As soon as Mrs Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester.**

"I think you have man" Leo chipped in.

Annabeth sighed. Again.

**"Now, honey—"**

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

"You wish Jackson" Clarisse muttered.

"You never volunteer punishments dude!" Leo cried. "This guy's an amateur!"

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

"It never is!"

"Leo shush!"

**"Come with me," Mrs Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me.**_**I**___**pushed her."**

"I don't think that'll work goat boy" Thalia said ruefully, shaking her head.

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs Dodds scared Grover to death.**

Grover pulled out a tin can from the pocket of his coat and chewed convulsively.

"What kind of monster is Mrs Dodds?" Piper asked. Grover shuddered and chewed faster.

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

"Definitely not like Hodges" Leo muttered, remembering the crazy goat man's response to anything that confronted him.

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—**_**will**_—**stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs Dodds barked at me. "**_**Now**_**."**

"Ok drop the honey bit already" Leo made a face.

"She always does that" Nico said without thinking, before his eyes widened. Once again he was the subject of intense scrutiny; the newer campers stared at him and Thalia did too, startled.

"You know this scary leather wearing monster of a maths professor?" Leo asked.

"Err"

"You'll find out soon" Annabeth said, letting Nico off the hook.

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

"Must have been terrifying" Thalia muttered. Jason bit back a grin.

**Then I turned to face Mrs Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

"Getting sloppy" Annabeth said, studying the book intently. "She's forgetting to act human."

**How'd she get there so fast?**

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counsellor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

Thalia gave a loud derisive snort. Jason turned to her.

"They all say that" she growled, reminding him of the vision he had of Lupa. "Monsters the lot of them."

"There are monsters in medicine?" Piper asked feeling a little stunned.

"Doctors, psychologists-a lot of monsters infiltrate the human workforce. In this case, monsters will try and convince demigod parents to medicate their children. Of course doing so dulls our senses and makes us vulnerable to an attack." Annabeth said matter of factly.

"But if we don't believe in the Greek gods and don't know what we are?" Piper asked.

"We can still attract monsters, unknowingly or not. The scent of a demigod is strong. The more powerful your godly parent, the stronger your scent and aura is to monsters. Thalia, Nico and Jason would be overwhelmed by monsters if they were out in the open right now. It's why those that do have families outside don't go there often and stay here." Annabeth paused.

"Those doctors are a pain" Thalia grumbled. Jason studied her in concern and softening, she said quietly "I had to listen to one tell Mom that I needed to be medicated and that I'd struggle in society otherwise. It pissed me off."

A little self-conscious, Jason reached over to squeeze her fingers. Thalia returned the pressure with a small genuine grin.

Annabeth continued.

"It's not as if the whole industry is run by monsters though. There are kids who do have ADHD and are not demigods; it's just that it's a common trait in demigod children and often dyslexia. Doctors just don't realise that our ADHD is important to demigods' survival."

"Oh" Piper said lamely, glancing uncertainly at Jason who patted her knee a little awkwardly.

"Thank you for the lesson Professor Chase" Clarisse said irritably. "Now can we get back to the book?"

**I wasn't so sure.**

"That's because you have good instincts Percy Jackson and if you just listened to them a little better, you'd get in a lot less trouble" Thalia said severely, clearly following Nico's idea that she was talking to a narrating Percy and not an inanimate object.

**I went after Mrs Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

"That's not good" Chris frowned. "Chiron can pretty hard to reach when he's reading."

**I looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

Nico just shook his head. It was hard to believe Percy was ever this naïve.

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

**Mrs Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

"Ok, she's hacked off" Leo stated unnecessarily. "Why did she wait so long to kill him if she had been his teacher for months? She could've offed him during one of those detentions she gave him and be done with it."

Annabeth flinched.

"She was probably waiting to see signs of his parent first" Jason theorised aloud. "Think about it, she only made a move after Percy used his power without realising it."

"But why wait? She knew he was a demigod, am I right?" Leo asked Grover.

"Yeah" Grover said reluctantly, shifting uncomfortably.

"Unless they wanted to be sure who his parent was" Piper continued the thread. "If your scent or aura is stronger the more powerful your parent is Percy's has to be pretty obvious to monsters wouldn't it? Maybe they wanted to confirm that he was the son of a really powerful god or something."

"You're partly right" Annabeth said mulling over Piper's statement. "I think it should explain it in the book though."

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

"Get away with it?" Jason said sharply, eye narrowing. "Are they talking about the lightning bolt? It was stolen already?"

Annabeth sighed. "As far as we know it was stolen around Christmas of that time. That was when we heard whispers of fighting on Olympus."

"And it's when the book mentioned the odd weather they'd been having" Piper said in realisation. "But why impersonate a teacher to go after someone who didn't even know they were a half-blood or even believe in the gods?"

"Like you said, Percy's aura is distinctive" Annabeth sighed for what felt the umpteenth time.

Rachel intervened. "And it's probably explained in the book at some point. Can I read again?" she asked playfully before turning her attention back to the book.

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

"Teachers are evil creatures" Leo said seriously. "This one's just even more so."

"Ok stop Leo" Piper muttered in an undertone; Rachel was looking exasperated and Clarisse had removed her golden spear from her back in the guise of polishing it, but she was gripping a little tighter than was strictly necessary.

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

Dad's angry, Jason mused thoughtfully. There seemed to be even more going on even with the help of the back cover and his own limited memories were telling him.

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.**

Chris snorted.

"Oh yes Kelp for Brains that must be the reason" sarcasm dripped off Thalia's words like thick honey.

**Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on**_**Tom Sawyer**___**from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

"Seaweed Brain" Annabeth groaned this time, shaking her head.

"Is it me or does this guy have a lot of nicknames to do with his brains?" Leo whispered to Jason and Piper.

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

Gods that was a cheesy line. Couldn't they come up with something original? Leo wondered abstractly.

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shrivelled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

"Urgh" Thalia hissed. The silver circlet around her head sparked violently and her hands involuntarily curled into fists. Electric blue eyes flashed.

"What's wrong?" Jason asked in alarm as he felt the change in the atmosphere above him. He might be the one to fly out of the two of him but he could sense instinctively that his sister's power to summon lightning was even greater than his own.

The others might not be able to sense changes in weather patterns but considering the sky was rapidly darkening over them, they knew something was wrong.

"Oh Styx" Grover muttered as realisation made him want to bang his head against the pine tree. He scrambled to think of something to say when Annabeth leaned over him.

"Thalia! Stop" her voice was firm and commanding.

Thalia fought to control herself and took deep strong breaths to control her sudden rage. She refused to look up at the giant pine tree behind her where she had once stood against the horde of monsters sent from Tartarus to destroy her and had succeeded on that very spot.

A hand took hold of hers and she jerked instinctively, a crackle of electricity shooting down the joined hands. But the grip merely tightened instead of with drawing and she opened her eyes to meet her brother's concerned blue.

Her anger instantly began to dissipate and she squeezed the fingers of her brother and she closed her eyes and focussed on calming down. The familiar comforting power of her half-sister Artemis flowed through her and she felt her fury subside.

When she opened her eyes again the sky was once again clear and everyone was staring at her.

"Sorry" she grimaced, letting go of her brother's hand. It was lucky no-one else had touched her, they wouldn't have fared well.

"I'm sorry Thalia" Grover said mournfully. "I should have warned you."

"Me too" Annabeth chimed in apologetically. She and Grover were closer to her, their eyes wide with remorse and self-recrimination.

Thalia gave them a half smile; she knew that they hadn't meant to leave her in the dark. And in fairness, her reaction was a little extreme.

"Don't worry about it guys."

"Are you ok?" Jason asked anxiously, sky coloured eyes worried. Piper and Leo were also looking at her in concern and across from her Nico was staring at the ground, subdued.

"Yes I'm fine" Thalia gave her head a rueful shake. "I just realised what the monster actually was and got a little pissed."

"What is it?" Leo asked uncertainly, despite the winces among some at the slightly tactless of the question.

Thalia sighed. "It's one of Hades creatures. It has sisters and together they're known as the Kindly Ones."

Piper frowned and Jason's eyes widened. Kindly Ones. He knew that…

"The Kindly Ones? What kind of name is that?" Leo asked baffled.

"They're also called the Furies" Nico said quietly.

"Nico!" Annabeth said in alarm while Grover yelped.

"They won't come unless I want them to" Nico said firmly. He grimaced. "Not that I want them to. Ever."

"The Fu"

"Kindly Ones!" Chris interjected.

"The Kindly Ones then. You know them?" Piper said alarmed.

"Son of Hades" Nico shrugged wearily. He was avoiding looking at Thalia.

"It doesn't matter" Thalia said firmly and she managed to get Nico to look at her. She turned to her brother and his friends. "Hades sent a lot of monsters after me when he found out Dad broke the oath including the Kindly Ones. I just recognised the description and was surprised." She shrugged as though that was the end of it.

Jason looked upset.

"I'm reallllly sorry Thalia" Grover groaned. "I'm an idiot."

"Don't sweat it goat boy. It was a mistake and anyway I overreacted. Now let's go back to the book" Thalia ordered before anyone could argue. She met Rachel's eye and they silently communicated for a moment before Rachel dropped her head to read.

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

"A pen?" Leo said incredulously, breaking the slightly awkward air that lingered from Thalia's outburst. "What good is a pen going to be against a monster?"

"If it's what I think it is it's a lot more than a pen" Rachel informed him.

"You see! Everyone knows what's going to happen except us! How is this fair?"

"Shut it Valdez!" Clarisse snarled, looking aggrieved and still holding her painful looking spear.

**Mrs Dodds lunged at me.**

"The first monster he ever faces is a Kindly One?" Thalia felt her brows climb. "He really doesn't have much luck does he?"

Grover sighed.

"It depends on the situation really" Annabeth reflected; for though Percy had the misfortune of all his situations going from bad to worse, he was lucky to escape them relatively unscathed.

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"Oh" Leo said dumbly.

"It's like your coin" Piper stated surprised. Jason nodded absently; his mind was still on his sisters past and it was difficult to put it aside for the minute. But this was no place for such discussions so he tuned back into the story.

**Mrs Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

Was she this annoying when I met her? Thalia wondered. She couldn't remember; they hadn't talked much to one another during their brief meeting after all, save for insults.

**And she flew straight at me.**

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

"Natural." Rachel muttered, interrupting herself for once. "Natural for demigods' maybe. Anyone else would run away."

"It's not like they'd get far if they did" Nico pointed out quietly, not really eager to be at the centre of attention again, but no-one reacted much.

"True" Rachel frowned. "It would still be the more natural thing. Either that or faint."

Clarisse scoffed.

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water.**_**Hisss!**_

**Mrs Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. **

"You know, Percy really has interesting descriptions" Piper observed.

"They really sound like stuff he'd say" Grover sniffled. Annabeth closed her eyes.

**She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulphur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

"What happened there?" Leo asked confused.

"The Mist is still affecting him" Thalia frowned.

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

"Or something" Rachel rolled her eyes.

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

"No" Thalia imputed, shaking her head. "After all that, he believes he just imagined it?"

"Well what else can he do?" Rachel retorted, well aware of trying to explain things that couldn't be explained.

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs Kerr whipped your butt."**

**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our**_**teacher.**_ **Duh!"**

"Huh?" Leo said blankly.

"The Mist" Annabeth said simply.

"Oh."

Piper looked at the ground while Leo grimaced. Jason shifted, embarrassed.

"It's not working on Percy though" he observed.

"He started to see through it at this point." Grover sighed. "It wouldn't work on him, at least not as well as it did on the others."

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

**I asked Grover where Mrs Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"Grover you're an awful liar" Thalia told the satyr.

"I know" he said unhappily.

"That's not a bad thing Grover" Rachel told him, giving Thalia a reproving glare.

"It can be" she said defiantly.

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead.**

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs Dodds. The maths teacher."**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

"Lying is sometimes necessary as demonstrated" Thalia gestured at the book. "Now that's how it's supposed to go goat boy."

"Chiron's had hundreds of years to get good at lying. How do I get to be as good as that?" Grover said defensively.

"Ugh alright!" Rachel shut the book a little harder than necessary. "That's the end of the first chapter and I am not doing the next one. Who wants to go next?"

A/N: wow that took forever. Much longer than I'd thought it'd be and I'm not totally satisfied but I'll see what people think before making changes. Lemme know!


	3. Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death

"Ugh alright!" Rachel shut the book a little harder than necessary. "That's the end of the first chapter and I am not doing the next one. Who wants to go next?"

"Do we have to?" Leo complained, eyeing the book with disdain.

"Yes" Rachel growled, glaring at the son of Hephaestus. "Since everyone feels the need to interrupt every few minutes, I refuse to read the whole thing out loud thank you very much."

"We can take turns reading then" Chris suggested calmly. "The person beside you is next to read, is that alright?"

"Perfect" Rachel said in relief. She unceremoniously dumped the book into Nico's lap, making the boy scowl. "Now that I don't have to read, I can actually talk for a bit. Grover, you and Chiron are the only ones we know in the book so far and you're so different back then."

"Thank goodness" Thalia joked, patting her friend's arm at his affronted look.

"Thanks" he grumbled.

"I'm just saying you're more…confident these days" Rachel said slowly trying to explain what she was thinking about.

"Lord of the Wild" Thalia teased, bumping shoulders and making the satyr blush.

"I think Grover has just…grown into himself" Annabeth said, grey eyes contemplative. She turned to look at one of her best friends. "You've always been shy and didn't believe in yourself. And now, you do."

"I had you and Percy to help me" Grover sniffed and reached over to catch her hand. He gave a shaky Billy goat laugh. "Nothing toughens up a spineless satyr more than battling monsters and almost getting killed thousands of times."

"The beginnings of a beautiful friendship" Rachel's lips were tugging upwards, remembering the first time she and Percy had met. A beautiful friendship indeed, born from him almost killing her.

"Amen" Thalia dipped her head regally in agreement.

"The best friendships are forged in battling for your life against some blood thirsty monsters" Nico sighed, mostly to himself.

"I'll agree to that" Jason nodded to the brooding son of Hades, before exchanging glances with Leo and Piper. They were, without a doubt, his friends and always would be if he had any say.

"Can we move on, already?" Clarisse said exasperatedly, uncomfortable at the turn of conversation. Chris looked at her in concern, no doubt having an idea where her thoughts had drifted to.

"Sorry" Rachel shook her head, trying to clear it. "So anything else before Nico reads?"

"Let's see" Piper straightened her back, mentally going over everything they'd learned. "Somebody has stolen Zeus's" the sky rumbled "lightning bolt and Percy's been accused of stealing it. A Kindly One tried to attack him and he killed it with a magic pen." That last bit sounded ridiculous and beside her, Leo snorted. "And he now probably thinks he's lost his mind. We know that he doesn't like school, has been in six schools in the last six years and…" she paused. "I can't think of anything else off the top of my head."

"Has had awesome school trips" Leo chipped in, making Jason and Nico snort.

"Hates bullies" Rachel threw in, remembering a particularly memorable day in Goode High…

"That's a good thing" Piper murmured.

"Got away from monsters for a long time" Thalia said thoughtfully. "He's twelve. At that age, I had monsters after me all the time."

"His mom was very clever" Grover said sadly. "She managed to keep Percy safe. I think it'll come up in a while."

"Hmm" Thalia murmured, frowning.

Annabeth closed her eyes, feeling rather weary.

"Is that it?" Piper asked quietly, sensing the melancholy mood settling in on Percy's close friends.

"Your turn Nico" Thalia said briskly, pulling out of her reverie. Nico scowled half-heartedly before opening the book and flipping through the pages, grumbling under his breath.

"**Three old ladies knit the socks of death" **he read out, brows rising in bewilderment.

"Uh-sorry?" Leo said blankly. Most appeared confused, though some had reacted quite badly.

Annabeth had paled. Grover shuddered and wrapped an arm around her. Thalia's mouth dropped open in shock.

Jason found himself tensing, a sliver of thought trying to surface in his murky memory. Old ladies knitting….a sharp ache went through his skull as the memory resisted coming forward, though a cold chill went down his spine. He couldn't remember what they were, but they were not good.

"Di immortalies" Thalia whispered, looking stunned.

"What is it?" Leo asked, unnerved by the response generated from the quirky but seemingly harmless chapter title. Piper was frowning hard, clearly going over the Greek myths she knew, while Jason appeared to be in deep thought, head bowed and fists clenched.

"Were they-?" Chris asked hesitantly, recognising the description and looking a little pale himself. Clarisse looked grimmer than usual.

"N-no" Grover cleared his throat. "They weren't after him."

Thalia's head snapped up startled. Her eyes went to her old friends'. Annabeth met her gaze and her eyes were sad. She mouthed one word. _Luke._

"What wasn't after him?" Leo demanded, feeling completely out of the loop. It wasn't an unusual experience for him, but he wouldn't let it go here.

"It's the Moirae" Thalia said softly. "The Three Fates."

Piper gasped and Jason's head jerked up. The Fates…the Parcae. (1)

"The Fates" Leo said slowly, still confused.

"They control a person's fate Leo" Jason said distantly, the resistant memory suddenly forming as he spoke. "They hold people's lives as string. And when it's that person's time to die-they cut the string."

"Right" Leo said slowly, trying to wrap his mind around this concept. "So they're bad?" Leo asked unable to really find anything to joke about in this atmosphere.

"They're not bad or evil" Annabeth said quietly. "Just not a good omen."

"Ah" Leo nodded, feeling uncomfortable.

There was a slight pause before Nico decided to continue.

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.**

**This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our maths teacher since Christmas.**

"Wow really?" Leo asked amazed.

"The wonders of the Mist" Thalia sighed. Piper winced a little.

"Still surprises me" Nico shook his head.

**Every so often I would spring a Mrs Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

Leo snickered.

"He was really confused" Grover smiled wistfully.

"I don't blame him" Rachel said ruefully, remembering the times she would see things and no-one believing her. It hadn't been fun.

**It got so I almost believed them—Mrs Dodds had never existed.**

**Almost.**

Thalia nodded approvingly.

**But Grover couldn't fool me.**

Grover grinned sheepishly as the others glanced at him.

**When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

"Goat boy" Thalia said with a long suffering sigh.

"Oh leave him be Thalia" Annabeth shook her head at the Hunter while Grover gave her a grateful smile.

**Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.**

"Brilliant deduction Jackson" Clarisse muttered, rolling her eyes. Chris nudged her gently and she sighed. She didn't like Jackson, everyone knew that. But she did respect him and she was grudgingly concerned for him and Annabeth.

**I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.**

"I do not blame him" Thalia murmured.

"Me either" Nico agreed with a small shudder.

**The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

"Jeez" Leo shook his head. "Is that basically the gods having a temper tantrum?"

"I wouldn't let them hear you say that" Annabeth said to him. "But yes, they were really angry and when they're angry"

"We know it" Piper finished and Annabeth nodded.

Jason sighed and rubbed his left forearm.

**I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs.**

"I know Percy's got dyslexia and he can't sit still for even a minute, but he's not stupid" Rachel said frowning. "He can actually be a good student."

"Only if it's interesting to him" Annabeth pointed out. "And Percy's not a scholar."

"I know but" Rachel just shrugged.

"I think everyone's like that" Leo pointed out; it was certainly true for him.

"It's just-never mind" Rachel shook her head, giving up.

**I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class. Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests**

"That's not laziness" Annabeth suddenly snapped, making Nico and those around her jump. Rachel also looked angry. It wasn't Percy's fault he was dyslexic.

**I snapped. I called him an old sot.**

Annabeth snorted.

**I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

"What does it mean?" Piper asked Annabeth.

"A drunken fool" Annabeth smiled a little wickedly. _Good one Seaweed Brain._

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

"Ah" Piper said softly, feeling sympathy well up. It wasn't a nice feeling, getting kicked out of school, never mind many times. Jason had turned at her low sigh, looking at her in concern. She gave him a small smile.

**Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

**I was homesick.**

Annabeth smiled sadly.

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

Annabeth let out a soft growl and Grover tightened his arm on her shoulder.

**And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend**

Grover smiled at that.

**Even if he was a little strange.**

Now he made a face as the others laughed at him. Thalia bumped against him, chuckling.

**I worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

"Oh that's sweet" Rachel cooed. Grover went red as snickers went through the circle. Annabeth patted his hand, smirking.

**I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

**As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.**

Annabeth smiled at that.

**I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.**

"Good" Thalia muttered.

**The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. **

Leo chuckled at that. Percy had some really good descriptions.

**There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon,**

"That's not hard" Rachel said, frowning.

"For a dyslexic it is" Piper pointed out.

**Or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

"Here, here" Leo muttered.

**I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt. I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**

**I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

**I'd never asked a teacher for help before.**

Annabeth sighed. Percy's fatal flaw wasn't hubris, but gods above knew he was stubborn.

**Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.**

"Ah Percy" Rachel murmured, feeling a nostalgic surge of sympathy.

**I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor. I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said,**

"What are you doing there?" Nico sighed. He could see why Rachel refused to read for long.

**"... Worried about Percy, sir."**

**I froze.**

"Busted" Chris shook his head.

**I'm not usually an eavesdropper **

Nico snorted. Rachel and Annabeth exchanged glances, eyebrows raised.

**But I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

"Well that's true" Piper said fairly. Grover fiddled with his reed pipes.

**I inched closer.**

**"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too—"**

**"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

"A lot more" Thalia said seriously. Annabeth swatted her while Nico and Chris snorted with laughter.

**"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead line— "**

"Deadline?" Jason queried frowning. Nobody answered him.

**"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

**"Sir, he saw her..."**

**"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

"Not quite" Rachel said sardonically.

**"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

The newer campers peered at the satyr, who was staring at the ground. Thalia caught her brother's eye and shook her head.

**"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

Leo let out a snort of laughter, finding this statement funny. What a nice thing to hear from your best friend and teacher.

**The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

**Mr. Brunner went silent.**

"Whoops" Leo was still snickering.

**My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

**A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

"Why would that with him?" Rachel shook her head.

"Monsters" Nico informed the Oracle deadpan. Rachel narrowed her eyes at him; that hadn't been what she'd meant.

"It's his preferred weapon" Annabeth interjected. She suddenly recalled Percy's archery skills and leaned against Grover for comfort.

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

**A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. **

"Considering he's not aware of monsters and stuff, he's pretty observant" Jason mused.

**A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

**"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."**

**"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

There was a shudder of sympathy from Leo and surprisingly Thalia, who patted Grover's arm. Annabeth just shook her head.

**"Don't remind me."**

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

**"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

"Did you know he was watching you?" Piper asked.

Grover shook his head. "Percy's scent was all over the school, we couldn't tell it apart. But I knew he was upset."

**I didn't answer.**

**"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

**"Just...tired."**

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.**

"Didn't work" Grover muttered, twirling his reed pipes.

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger**

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

There was a loud groan of sympathy on the hill.

"Three hours" Rachel grimaced at the thought. Grover absently flexed his fingers; years of exams could on occasion send phantom pains shooting up his arms.

**My eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

**"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."**

Rachel and Piper winced at that. Annabeth frowned.

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

Thalia and Annabeth growled making poor Grover shift uncomfortably in between them. They were scary when angry.

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

**"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

"Jeez he's just making it worse" Piper said in exasperation. That would be hard for anyone to hear from someone you respected.

**My eyes stung.**

Annabeth bit her lip hard feeling a little misty eyed herself.

**Here was my favourite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. **

"That's awful" Rachel said sympathetically, feeling a surge of empathy for her missing friend. Everyone, including the guys and Clarisse, were quiet, thankfully not poking fun at Percy's thoughts.

**After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

Leo grimaced and Piper shifted.

**"Right," I said, trembling.**

**"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

"Oh gods" Thalia groaned amidst the collective snorts and groans that followed the last statement. Annabeth shut her eyes and shook her head.

"Quit while you're ahead Chiron" Nico muttered to himself before going on.

**"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

"I really appreciate being reminded" Leo added only slightly joking. Jason glanced at him, concerned.

**"Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

Nico cackled at that, as the others followed.

"Oh yes nobody important" Thalia chortled, holding her stomach.

"Oh no of course not" Rachel gasped, grinning.

"Just a bunch of immortal gods who don't appreciate being called nobodies" Chris added, grinning widely. He always did like Percy.

"Most of whom would be happy to kill you anyway" Grover glanced up uncertainly at the sky.

"Really?" Piper asked, calming down.

"Really" Annabeth wore a small smile, remembering all the times Percy had hacked off one god or another.

"How many?" Jason asked, frowning.

"It'd go faster if we went down the list of those that don't hate him" Thalia said ruefully, well aware of Percy's ability to annoy the divine.

"Let's see, Dad, Zeus, Ares, Dionysus, Hera, Persephone doesn't really like him because he threatened her" Nico rattled off.

"I don't think Dad really hates him" Thalia frowned thoughtfully. "But he doesn't like him either."

"Oh that's alright then" Leo said dryly.

"Mom doesn't like him either" Annabeth sighed.

"Do our parents like him?" Piper indicating herself and Leo.

"Aphrodite really likes Percy" Grover said, exchanging a grin with Thalia and Annabeth who pursed her lips at him, smiling a little.

"Hephaestus called him an upstart" Leo added.

"He did?" Annabeth frowned now, upset.

"Not well liked among the godly community then?" Jason quipped.

"He just has a tendency of telling the gods really uncomfortable truths" Annabeth said ruefully. "Can we keep going?"

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city. What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

"I'm so glad I've left school" Chris sighed. Clarisse, Leo and Thalia nodded in agreement. Grover bleated softly with laughter.

**"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

"What a coincidence" Leo said mock thoughtfully.

**During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

Thalia just shook her head, not bothering to chide Grover on his appalling stealth skills.

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

"Scared the fur off of me" Grover shuddered.

Piper grinned.

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

Leo just shook his head and spotted Chris and Thalia doing the same thing.

**Grover's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?"**

**"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

"Not much-just the entire conversation" Grover grumbled.

**He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

Thalia rolled her eyes.

**"Grover—"**

**"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs Dodds, and ..."**

**"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

Laughter rang out as Grover blushed.

**His ears turned pink.**

Nico suddenly paused as his senses tingled. Everyone glanced up at the sudden silence when a sudden chill and shadow crossed over them. Darkness settled behind Nico to coalesce into an enormous body of dark fur.

"Jesus!" Piper yelped. Jason reflexively jumped to his feet as Leo swore and scrambled backwards. The older campers and Oracle were largely indifferent.

"Oh hi Mrs O'Leary" Rachel cooed, reaching out a hand to the behemoth. Piper could only stare in amazement as 'Mrs O'Leary' whined, blew out to ruffle Nico's hair before licking Rachel's hand, the long tongue wrapping around the petite hand.

Rachel giggled as the huge hot tongue lapped her skin thoroughly soaking the limb. Nico scratched the beast's body. Mrs O'Leary shook her head before moving to nuzzle and drench Annabeth's face in saliva. She grinned a little and scratched her face.

"So _this_ is Mrs O'Leary" Piper said as she watched Annabeth fend off the enthusiastic greetings from the fierce looking hell hound before starting to sniff the daughter of Zeus and begin its ministrations all over again, to Thalia's chagrin as she tried to fend it off.

"Yup" Nico nodded. Jason slowly sank down to the ground again, keeping an eye on the hell hound that seemed determined to give the campers a bath. Grover was leaning back into Annabeth, clearly hoping to avoid the same fate as his friends.

Mrs O'Leary deemed herself satisfied in giving the older campers a thorough greeting, including Chris and Clarisse, though much less enthusiastically before peering at the newer campers.

Leo shrank behind Jason in case it decided to say hello. Piper, meanwhile, cautiously held out her hand to the hellhound to Jason's chagrin. He was ready to yank her arm back as it sniffed her curiously, before giving it a tentative lick.

Piper giggled at the tickling sensation and looked over to the boys'. Leo was leaning away from the enormous dog while Jason looked uneasy at its proximity to them. Piper smiled at him.

"Oh come on Jason she's friendly. Except for monsters and anyone who attacks her friends" Thalia said encouragingly.

Piper grinned at him as he ever so reluctantly held out his hand to the giant. The dog sniffed him curiously for a few seconds before starting to nuzzle him. He repressed a shudder at the hot thick drool running over his fingers.

"So this is a hell hound huh?" Piper ran her fingers along the surprisingly soft fur.

"The friendliest hellhound you'll ever meet" Nico idly scratched her flank, still holding the book open on the page he'd been reading.

"She's cute" Piper smiled, ignoring the looks her two male friends gave her. She could practically hear the look the two gave each other, clearly saying _girls._

"She is isn't she?" Rachel smiled at her cheerfully. Annabeth gave a small grin at the looks that they were given from Jason, Leo and Thalia. Predictably, Clarisse looked exasperated.

"Come on Leo" Piper encouraged, still scratching the hound's face, causing it to lean into her. Jason was still stiff, but hadn't removed his hand from the inquisitive dog.

"You're alright" Leo said hastily, eyeing the impressive bulk of the dog. "I don't do well with organics."

"Organics?" Piper repeated as Jason snorted and withdrew his hand to surreptitiously wipe it against his jeans. "You've been spending too much time with your machines Valdez."

"They don't decide to give me baths without any warning" Leo remembered Festus spewing Tabasco sauce and oil all over him and felt the familiar pang of loss.

"Well they should Valdez" Piper said archly, correctly following his line of thought. Mrs O'Leary had apparently been satisfied and was now moving again, to Piper's small regret; she quite liked the gentle giant already. "Has she gotten bored from chasing scorpions and come over to say hi?"

"She's a bit lonely" Nico said frowning at the beasts behind, whose tail wasn't wagging as happily as it usually did. She knew Percy was gone and it depressed her. He knew she had gone to Percy's mom's place recently as well as spending time with Annabeth, but it still didn't stop her from howling at night.

Mrs O'Leary padded around the group of friends, snuffling them before settling behind the group, resting her head behind Nico. Annabeth leaned against the warm bulk behind her. Piper repressed a giggle as she felt the tail rhythmically sweep against her back every few seconds. Jason looked uncomfortable making her smile at him and patted his knee.

Nico leant back to pat his friend as he balanced the book on his knee to read on.

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

"Why are those cards like that?" Chris asked, to Nico's frustration. "It's impossible for a demigod to read them."

"Ah-Mr D does the cards" Grover said delicately. There was nothing else to say.

"Oh."

**Grover Underwood**

**Keeper**

**Half-Blood Hill**

**Long Island, New York**

**(800) 009-0009**

**"What's Half—?"**

**"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."**

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

Grover frowned at that. "What did he mean by that?"

"I think he means he thought you were like him" Piper told him, able to follow Percy's line of thinking. "That you weren't rich or from an important family."

"What's wrong with that?" Rachel said, sounding offended but she smiled to show she was kidding.

"Nothing!" Piper held up her hands in self-defence. Her father was well off after all.

**"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

**He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."**

**"Why would I need you?"**

**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

**I stared at him.**

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me.**

"Ah Percy, you're such a sweetheart" Rachel cooed, ignoring the revolted looks on most of the males faces as well as Clarisse, who looked ill. Thalia cackled at Rachel's comment and the expressions around her, while Annabeth actually started giggling at Grover's mortification.

Piper was looking at Rachel oddly. "You sound like my mother" she said, making several others laugh. Rachel just shrugged unrepentantly.

Nico cleared his throat and started to read on, Mrs O'Leary peering over his shoulder.

**And here he was acting like he was the one who defended me.**

**"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

**There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

Mrs O'Leary began to growl, her sides vibrating. Her ears were pricked and erect.

"Well that's an ominous sign" Leo quipped, watching the behemoth warily.

"How intelligent is she?" Jason asked Nico, gesturing at the hellhound.

The hellhound in question swivelled her ears in Jason's direction.

"Very" Nico said succinctly before continuing.

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

Thalia straightened, her previous amusement disappearing. Annabeth gripped her knife hilt hard.

"The sock wielding Fates, I take it?" Leo tried to joke, but it fell flat. Jason's jaw was twitching. Grover had paled considerably and was shivering. Rachel appeared to be in deep thought, staring into the distance.

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

Grover had begun to convulsively bite on his reed pipes; it took an effort to stop. Annabeth fished in his pocket and shoved a tin can in his hands, which he gratefully seized.

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

Thalia closed her eyes, muttering in Ancient Greek. Jason hadn't a clue what she was saying, but he could get the gist. Annabeth was rhythmically slapping her blade against her thigh, looking twitchy. The giant dog's growl was turning into a whine and he wondered again just how intelligent the beast of Hades actually was.

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

**"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

**"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

**"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

"Not funny" Annabeth hissed, looking pinched and anguished. Grover held her tightly.

**"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears.**

Thalia's cursing became louder and more fluent, her eyes still closed. Annabeth leaned against Grover, feeling ill.

**I heard Grover catch his breath.**

**"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

**"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

**"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic.**

"Gods almighty" Chris breathed, looking stunned. There was silence among the group, save Mrs O'Leary's snuffles.

Thalia had ceased her tirade and was breathing deeply. Jason squeezed her arm for comfort. Annabeth just rested her head against Grover's shoulder, looking pale and drawn.

Piper cleared her throat. The silence was deafening. "So-they weren't after him, you said?"

"No" Rachel's voice seemed different; it was deeper and lower. She was still staring into space. Annabeth gently touched her shoulder and she suddenly came back, looking startled.

"Uh, no they weren't" Rachel blushed. "It was a death entwined with Percy's fate."

"Right" Leo gave up. "Can we keep going then?"

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

Leo grinned half-heartedly.

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

**The passengers cheered.**

**"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

"Are you guys ok?" Piper asked, concerned.

Grover shuddered and gave a jerky nod. "Just a-delayed reaction."

**"Grover?"**

**"Yeah?"**

**"What are you not telling me?"**

**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

**"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs Dodds, are they?"**

"They're worse" Grover muttered.

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

**"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

Thalia raised an eyebrow and glanced at Annabeth.

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

**"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

**"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

"Last time?" Jason queried sharply. There was more going on here than met the eye.

Annabeth shook her head at him. _Later_, she mouthed to the newer campers. Reluctantly, Jason subsided.

**"What last time?"**

**"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

"Geez dude you're making me nervous" Leo complained, shifting restlessly. "D'you have to sound as if the world's ending?"

Mrs O'Leary gave a mournful sounding howl, making Leo start and edge closer to Piper.

"I was worried" Grover said defensively to the son of Hephaestus who he really didn't know. "The Fates themselves visiting an undetermined camper? Not good."

"Take it easy goat boy" Thalia soothed patting his arm. "At least you didn't start gnawing on the furniture."

Annabeth and Piper snorted in perfect tandem, causing the two to exchange startled glances. Annabeth gave her a slight grin which she returned. She really liked Annabeth.

**"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

**"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

"Blah" the young satyr grumbled to himself, recalling _that_ particular promise.

**"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

**"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

**He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

Leo choked at the last line, unable to decide whether to laugh or cringe at it. The others weren't much better.

"That's that chapter" Nico said shaking his head.

A/N: Ugh I hate this chapter! It's really irritating. I find myself having difficulty nailing the characters personalities, especially Leo. My own sense of humour is sarcastic and sardonic, a goofball's personality designed to defuse the tension is really hard to write for me. Anyway I'd appreciate any comments about my writing or ideas for the future chapters.

The Moirae the name for the Fates in Greek mythology. The Parcae is the Roman equivalent. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

There's been a comment to add Connor and Travis Stoll to the group and I'm definitely considering it. I might even add Katie Gardner…she rarely sits in on these things, hehe.

Until next time. Fortunately I really like the next chapter and it could possibly be done quicker.


	4. Grover Unexpectedly Loses his Pants

Leo stretched his back, wincing as it popped and cracked. "So another chapter done then?"

"Yup" Nico tossed the book to Chris, who caught it and started flipping through the pages. Nico leaned back against Mrs O'Leary who was resting her head on her paws, looking ready to take a long nap. She was thankfully leaving Peleus alone; the two often acted like cats and dogs when they got together.

"Interesting chapter anyway" Piper said slowly, tilting her head in thought.

"That pretty much describes Percy's life actually. Interesting" Thalia flashed a smile at Annabeth, who rolled her eyes.

"'Interesting…pretty much sums up life recently" Leo said mockingly, glancing at Jason who smirked slightly.

"So can we keep going then?" Rachel asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

"Everybody alright to go?" Chris inquired, holding the book open. There was an evil smirk on his face that caught Clarisse's attention, she was frowning at him. Chris just caught her eyes, winked and cut his gaze to Grover before reading

"**Grover Unexpectedly Loses his Pants,"**

A series of snorts, exclamations and guffaws exploded through the group, making Mrs O'Leary jerk and dislodge those who had been using her as a back support. Grover looked stunned, before realisation dawned and he blushed profusely, muttering under his breath about best friends with minds of seaweed. Thalia was holding her stomach as she laughed, tears running down her face while Rachel stared at the satyr in bewilderment.

"Dude" Leo wheezed, leaning against Jason for support as he fought to control his breathing. "What the hell"

"It's not what you think" Grover groaned, fighting the urge to bury his head in his hands.

"Well what's going through my head right now is-OW!" Leo yelped as a tin can sailed through the air to hit him in the face with surprising accuracy and force. He covered his face with his hands, hoping to avoid any more projectiles the annoyed satyr would throw at him.

"Serves you right" Annabeth smirked at the son of Hephaestus while the others sniggered. "And can everyone else pull their heads out of the gutter while Chris reads please?" Grover shot her a grateful look while Chris determinedly read on, his lips twitching.

**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

"Seriously Annabeth how do you put up with this guy?" Thalia shook her head exasperatedly.

"There are times I wonder that myself" Annabeth muttered, refusing to allow herself to wallow. Percy was alive, God damn it and he better be whole and his memories intact when she caught up with him or else she would be really, _really _pissed off. Until then all she could do was train and plan and come up with back up plans for when she did reach him and read about Percy's life as well, apparently. What else could she do?

**I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?"**

"In fairness I would have ditched you too" Piper told the satyr, who huffed and then sighed, shaking his head.

"I probably would have told him to tell me what was going on before threatening bodily harm" Rachel cast a glance at Annabeth's brooding face and squeezed her hand lying in between them.

"Grover's lucky you're not a demigod then" Nico said, grinning, recalling Rachel's assault of the feared Titan Kronos. Looking back on it only made the incident even funnier.

Rachel smirked at him. "Who needs to be a demigod to kick ass?"

Nico snickered and Annabeth bit her lip. Jason traded a glance with Piper; there was clearly an inside joke there.

**Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, and then made a beeline for the restroom.**

Leo snorted, unable to help himself. He wasn't alone; Jason was fighting to keep a straight face. Thalia just held a hand over her face, either in amusement or chagrin, it was hard to tell. Grover just blushed.

**Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

**"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.**

**A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

"She's awesome" Thalia said instantly. There were instant agreements from all who knew her.

"She really is" Rachel smiled wistfully.

"Percy's really lucky" Annabeth sighed, a cloak of sadness falling the instant she thought of Sally. The poor woman was hit hard by Percy's disappearance. Annabeth tried to keep her up to date on the situation but it was difficult for the poor woman to accept that Percy wouldn't be found for at least six months and probably wouldn't be home for even longer. Paul was affected too, his genuine fondness for his stepson, trying to keep the authorities in the dark about Percy's disappearance as well as being the rock for Sally to cling to during her time of need was not easy and not what the poor man probably imagined what his life married to Sally Jackson would be like.

"She makes the best cake" Nico said dreamily. "And cookies."

"We get it" Clarisse rolled her eyes to the heavens.

Thalia caught her brother's eye and decided to elaborate for the newer campers. "Most of us have met Percy's mom a few times. Percy's one of the lucky ones; his mother is really cool about her son being a demigod and his crazier than normal demigod life."

"That's nice" Piper said softly, thinking of her own father and how he simply wasn't able to accept the godly world and now lived in blissful ignorance. She felt a twinge of envy for Percy Jackson; he was able to share his adventures and life with his mother while she would have to give a highly stretched version of the truth, if not lie outright.

She startled as she felt a hand settle on top of hers and turned her head to face Jason. He studied her intently, blue eyes concerned. At the same time she felt Leo nudge her with his elbow and caught sight of his cheeky grin. Rolling her eyes, she playfully did the same before turning to Jason. She gave him a small smile of thanks and expected him to let her hand go. Instead, he looked away; cheeks lightly tinted and kept his hand where it was. Feeling much better, she daringly squeezed his fingers in return and tuned back into the world around her.

**Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**

"I've always thought that was true" Nico said idly, leaning back against the warm fur behind him. "You wouldn't believe how many decent souls end up dying before doing anything worthwhile with their lives and end up in the Fields of Asphodel. It's sad really."

"Err okay" Leo eyed the Son of Hades weirdly. Nonplussed Chris went on.

**Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

"Damn" Thalia swore, looking shocked.

"That's awful" Rachel whispered and Piper nodded, feeling a great swell of sympathy for Sally Jackson.

Annabeth felt ill. She had never known this and awe seeped through her; after everything Sally had endured she still went on without any sort of bitterness or unfairness about her life. She closed her eyes and prayed that she would be able to make it through the latest injustice in her life and that her son would return to her. Sensing her turmoil, Grover mutely wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

**The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

Chris paused slightly at that. The other demigods present were quiet and after a beat he continued.

**I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because**_**it**___**makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

**See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

**Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

"Wow" Rachel blinked in surprise. "That's impressive. She told the truth without actually telling the truth."

Thalia snorted.

**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

"Demigods aren't" Thalia said casually, too casually. Jason looked at her but she was staring at the pine tree at the top of the hill.

**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano,**

"Ugliano?" Leo repeated incredulously before breaking into peals of laughter, Nico following him. Jason snorted, struggling not to crack up at his friend's reaction more than the name itself. Piper rolled her eyes at the pair of idiots she had for friends' and frowned at the expressions on Annabeth and Grover's faces. They were not as amused as the others. Rachel was frowning; she didn't know much about Sally's first husband, Percy rarely mentioned him and she knew better not to pry.

**Who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him,** **and then showed his true colours as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nick named him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

"Oh gross!" Rachel cried, sounding revolted. Clarisse wrinkled her nose in disgust as all of the females present made sounds of revulsion.

"If they're anything like my gym shorts that's pretty bad" Leo muttered, trying not to imagine the smell; it would most likely make him nauseous.

**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.**

**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

"Ok eww" Rachel was disgusted.

"You're not kidding, that's disgusting" Piper made a face.

"Poor Sally" Thalia spun her mace can through her fingers restless. It was dawning on her that Percy's home life might not have been as nice as she thought even with such an awesome mom.

**Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

**"Where's my mom?"**

**"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

"He's asking him for money" Rachel was outraged. "'No hello, nice to see you, are you alright' he just wants money."

Annabeth gritted her teeth.

**That was it. No**_**Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**_

Rachel glared at the book, offended on Percy's behalf.

**Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

"It's not working" Clarisse said flatly as Thalia, Rachel and Piper made noises of disgust. Leo wrinkled his nose at the image forming in his head and wished this Percy dude was less vivid with his descriptions.

**He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting pay checks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

"WHAT?" Annabeth roared just as lightning split the sky followed by a crack of thunder.

Mrs O'Leary bolted, knocking over Nico and Rachel as she went and making Chris lose his grip on the book. Peleus further up the hill snarled and growled at the sudden noise.

Thalia looked utterly furious as did Rachel. Grover looked a little pale but he was trying to calm Annabeth who looked murderous.

"That's enough!" Piper shouted getting to her feet. "Everybody calm down!" To her profound relief, everyone did stop yelling and swearing and the smell of ozone died down.

"Where to I find this guy?" Thalia inquired in a deadly tone of voice, looking like an avenging angel. Piper felt a sliver of pity for anyone who dared to anger the daughter of Zeus.

"It's taken care of" Annabeth gritted out, her cheeks flushed pink. She was as scary as Thalia and Piper admired Grover for his composure between the two angry demigods.

"Well then we should keep reading then" Jason said firmly, eyeing his sister cautiously. "Chris can you?"

"Sure" Chris said quickly, flicking the book open to find the page, ignoring Nico's curses as he struggled to get upright from his backrest taking off. Finding the page he quickly started reading again, hoping to avoid calamity. Mrs O'Leary may be the friendliest hellhound you would ever meet and had taken on drakons and giants but even she was frightened from Annabeth and Thalia's anger which said a lot. Privately he thought the hellhound to be even smarter than he had realised.

**"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

**He raised a greasy eyebrow. **

Piper repressed a shudder.

**Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

Grover suddenly coughed and glanced at Annabeth. That was almost prophetic.

**"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof; he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

Thalia growled. Chris cringed and kept going.

**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

"One half decent excuse for a human being" Rachel muttered, tracing patterns on her knee.

**"Am I**_**right**_**?**_**"**___**Gabe repeated.**

**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

"Oh Gods that's gross" Rachel groaned, dropping her hand to the ground again.

"Seriously" Piper muttered, feeling a little ill. She might not be the epitome of a child of Aphrodite but damn the sounds of this were disgusting. She had always prided herself on her ability to judge people and right now her opinion of Gabe Ugliano was 'bottom of the barrel bad.'

**"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

**"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

Annabeth's dagger was tapping rhythmically against her thigh and the sound was more than a little distracting to Jason who glanced discreetly at the blonde girl. She seriously unnerved him. Not in the way Piper did-and he was trying not to read too much into their hand holding a few minutes ago-but more of a threat. Annabeth was dangerous and unpredictable to him and that made him uneasy.

**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

Rachel shuddered. She hated the smell of cigars.

Annabeth's dagger was not only bothering Jason. Grover caught her arm and squeezed, disrupting the girl's glare at the sky. She deflated and leaned against Grover in support.

**I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.**

**Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs Dodds,**

Nico shuddered at the thought. So did Thalia, though more discreetly.

"That's bad" Nico said succinctly.

**Or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**

Jason suppressed a shiver of his own.

**But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.**

"That's prophetic" Grover murmured to himself inwardly marvelling his friend's instincts.

**Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"**

**She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.**

**My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room.**

"Aww" Rachel cooed and broke the lingering tension around them. Thalia followed her seconds later, though hers was more teasing.

"Percy's gonna hate this" Annabeth said grinning slightly.

"I don't blame him" Leo eyed the book apprehensively.

**Her eyes sparkle and change colour in the light.**

Like Piper's Jason mused to himself.

**Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few grey streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.**

**I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

**"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, liquorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

"Nice" Nico grinned.

**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

"Aww" Rachel repeated softly looking far away.

Leo frowned.

**I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

"Boys" Thalia sighed disgustedly making the 'boys' roll their eyes at her. Annabeth smirked slightly; Thalia really acted more like a Hunter these days although there were some things about her she doubted would ever change.

**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

Thalia growled and fingered her mace can while Nico frowned darkly. Annabeth was twirling her knife in her hand her eyes the colour of hurricane clouds.

**I gritted my teeth.**

**My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

"Millionaires aren't any easier to live with" Rachel twirled a curl around her finger, suddenly defying her prim and proper education as her face fell into a frown.

"How do you know that?" Leo asked her. Piper frowned at him.

Rachel shrugged, looking preoccupied. "My dad's loaded."

Piper shook her head at Leo, warning him off any further enquiries.

"I think he just meant his mom deserved better" Grover assured her.

Rachel smiled at him, her sudden sadness disappearing. "Well that's true anyway."

**For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.**

Annabeth rolled her eyes just as Thalia did the same. Nico eyed them; that was creepy…

**I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

"Cripes that's bad" Grover muttered to Annabeth who snorted.

**Until that trip to the museum...**

**"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

**"No, Mom."**

**I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

"It wouldn't sound stupid to her Percy" Annabeth said slowly, still fiddling expertly with her knife, exasperated.

"If he thinks he's going crazy he's not going to tell his mother who thinks the world of him" Piper cocked her head thoughtfully. Rachel blinked and raised her eyebrows. Thalia looked at Piper before sighing in agreement.

**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

**"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

**"Three nights—same cabin."**

**"When?"**

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

**I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

Men, Thalia thought in disgust, wondering if her Lady could be persuaded to deal with this…thing, despite Annabeth's assurances that he was already dealt with. Her Lady was quite fond of Percy after all and she certainly wouldn't mind ridding the world of that foul bit of…grease.

**Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

Jason narrowed his eyes, unknowingly looking a lot like his sister.

**I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

**"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

"Why yes she was you small minded bully" Rachel said sweetly, a dark anger starting to shine in her eyes.

**"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

**"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your step father is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

Leo scowled heavily. If his mother had had to do that…respect reluctantly unfurled in his chest for Percy Jackson. If it had been his mother treated like that, he wouldn't have been so reticent about using his flame powers all those years ago. It took serious restraint to hold back anger like that.

**Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

"Pig" Piper whispered in quiet outrage.

Leo's lips twitched despite his own feelings. "You're more of an Aphrodite's kid then you let on Beauty Queen" he whispered back. "All those poor clothes that Sally couldn't buy…"

Piper punched his arm making him wince-damn but Piper was _strong_-but he was gratified to see the corner of Jason's mouth curl up as he glanced at them.

**"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

**"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

**"We'll be very careful."**

**Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

The growl that came out of Thalia this time was similar to Mrs O'Leary snarling at an enemy. _Definitely need to talk to Lady Artemis at some point…._

**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

"Do it!" Thalia, Nico, Leo and Clarisse shouted. It had been the first time Clarisse had spoken in a while but she looked ready to gut Gabe at this stage. Chris would have liked to see it happen but unfortunately it was not to be.

**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

**Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

"Why is right" Piper muttered. Jason silently agreed.

**"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

"Oh that must have been difficult" Rachel said snidely.

"I'm sure it probably gave the single brain cell he had a serious work out" Thalia scoffed, folding her arms.

"Assuming he even had a brain" Annabeth mumbled viciously.

Leo was starting to feel nervous, he glanced at Jason and then at Chris, who grimaced back at him over the book. He was starting to understand why it was he didn't have a girlfriend. The fairer sex was undoubtedly gorgeous but as scary as some of the monsters of Tartarus.

Seeing that two of the best looking girls he'd seen a long while were still clutching their weapons, it might be better if he just kept his mouth shut for the minute.

**"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

**He went back to his game.**

**"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

**But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

Thalia's lip curled. Sally Jackson deserved better. A lot better.

**An hour later we were ready to leave.**

**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

Annabeth's jaw was starting to hurt from clenching it so hard. "Piece of hydra dung" she hissed.

"We know" Grover murmured, squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. "He gets his in the end."

"I'm surprised Percy didn't kill him when he had the chance" Annabeth muttered back, her voice low enough to travel just to her other best friend.

"You know Percy wouldn't to that" Grover said just as quietly back. "Besides I'm pretty sure it felt more satisfying letting his mom take care of Smelly Gabe."

"Probably" Annabeth sighed. "Doesn't mean I like him getting off so easily. I didn't realise how bad his old stepfather was to Sally and Percy." Her grip on her knife tightened involuntarily.

"I think Gabe's lucky it was Sally who dealt with him and not Percy's dad" Grover winced at the thought.

Annabeth blinked at that and the slow evil grin made Grover cringe.

"C'mon it's over and done with and Percy and Sally don't have to worry about him anymore."

Annabeth sighed, the smile fading and she leaned against the satyr again, acknowledging the words.

**"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."**

"Hello he's twelve" Rachel glared at the book. "Does he look old enough to drive?"

**Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve.**

Nico snorted.

**But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. **

Grover blinked in surprise and exchanged glances with Annabeth.

"'Ward off evil? Does it work?" Leo asked hopefully, leaning forward.

**The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. **

"Ha ha!" Leo whooped. "That's so cool. I'm gonna have to remember that!"

"Was that actually Percy or just a coincidence?" Piper asked the others.

"Not a coincidence" Annabeth scowled at the book, her eyes flinty.

"Does that work on monsters by any chance?" Leo asked hopefully.

"Don't know" Thalia gave him a wolfish grin. "But you can try it next time if you want."

**Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

**I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets,**

Annabeth twitched and shuddered. "Spiders" she muttered, ignoring the grins her friends were giving her.

Jason looked at her oddly. The powerful and dangerous daughter of Athena was afraid of _spiders_?

**And most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

"I didn't think he felt cold in water" Rachel said surprised.

"Probably the Mist" Grover shrugged. "He was told the water was too cold and he believed it when he went in."

**I loved the place.**

"Of course he does" Annabeth sighed exasperatedly. Grover exchanged a fond grin with Thalia.

**We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the colour of the sea.**

**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

"What's with the blue?" Leo demanded, looking baffled. Who ate blue corn chips?

Chris grinned as he read the next line; he had always wondered the same thing.

**I guess I should explain the blue food.**

Nico and Piper snickered as Leo let out an "oh."

**See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

"Good woman" Leo nodded sagely, feeling a swell of satisfaction. The others were smiling and snickering.

"I never knew that" Annabeth murmured quietly.

"Neither did I" Grover said softly.

**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

The demigods went quiet for a moment, all thinking about their own godly parents.

**"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

"It's always amazed me that the Gods have no DNA but their kids are all mini replicas of them" Rachel commented.

"Seriously?" Piper looked a little stunned.

"This is the Gods we're talking about" Thalia said dryly. "They're big on ego like that."

Grover glanced nervously at the sky.

"Do they really not have DNA?" Piper asked for clarification.

"They're not human" Annabeth shrugged.

**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

**I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

_You're a lot more than that Percy_, Annabeth thought wistfully.

**"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"**

**She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

**"But... he knew me as a baby."**

**"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

"Probably dropped in at some point" Thalia shrugged her shoulders. She couldn't help wondering if her father had ever done that, unaware that similar thoughts were running through the other demigods heads.

**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

**I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

Leo grimaced. It would seem as if he wasn't the only one angry at his father.

**"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

**"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."**

**"Because you don't want me around?"**

"He did not" Annabeth blurted out, appalled.

Rachel growled, glaring at the book.

**I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

"Good!"

**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I**_**have**___**to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

**"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

"You're not" Thalia said seriously. "You're very abnormal."

Piper snorted and Annabeth rolled her eyes, looking at the Hunter. "And you're not?"

Thalia shrugged unconcerned. "Who wants to be normal?"

"Here here!" Rachel raised a hand in salute.

**"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

**"Safe from what?"**

**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**

"A Cyclops?" Thalia's brows rose in surprise as the newer campers winced. "Why would a Cyclops target Percy? His Dad's sired half of them."

"Yeah but the other half wouldn't care and even some of Poseidon's children wouldn't mind hurting him either" Annabeth said, thinking of Polyphemus.

**Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

"Jesus" Leo shuddered, a very similar memory flashing through his head.

"Didn't Hercules do something like that? Hera sent them or something" Piper asked Annabeth.

"Yes she did" Annabeth frowned darkly.

Clarisse grimaced and studied her spear.

**In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

**I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

"And that's the most important thing" Annabeth rolled her eyes to the heavens.

**"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

**"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

**"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

**My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

"The story's starting to unravel" Rachel murmured; if there was one thing Percy was good at, it was figuring plots out eventually.

**"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."**

**"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."**

**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

"Women always use their tears against you" Nico muttered, earning glares from the fairer sex.

**That night I had a vivid dream.**

"I hate dreams" Leo declared and the circle murmured agreement.

**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.**

Annabeth's eyes widened.

"What does that mean?" Leo's brow furrowed in thought. His dreams seemed to be more bizarre with the whole Wheel of Fortune thing but at least it had been informative. Jason had met a talking wolf named Lupa when he was sleeping and Piper had been warned about her dad in danger in a dream. Apparently all demigods had prophetic dreams, but maybe they weren't all so understandable?

"Sounds like Zeus and Poseidon are going at it again" Nico leaned back, his hands holding him off the ground.

**The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**

"What is this about?" Piper murmured to Jason, frowning, her mind working overtime.

"Doesn't sound good anyway" Jason whispered back to her and Leo who was also listening in.

**I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed,**_**No!**_

**I woke with a start.**

**Outside, it really was storming; the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**

"Oh that doesn't sound good" Rachel shifted slightly.

"Dad and Poseidon are really angry" Thalia said wryly.

**With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."**

**I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.**

"Definitely doesn't sound good" Leo muttered edgily.

**Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

**Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.**

"Not exactly Grover, what does that mean?" Nico asked, bemused.

**"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

**My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

**"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

**I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

_**"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!"**___**he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you**_**tell**___**her?"**

Jason tilted his head; the Greek made absolutely no sense to him. It was an uncomfortable reminder that he really didn't belong there, watching the others reat and laugh at what Grover had said.

**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be...**

**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before:**_**"Percy.**___**Tell me**_**now**_**!"**

**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

**She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you.**_**Go**_**!**_**"**_

**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

"That's it" Chris said, lowering the book.

_**"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!"**__** –O Zeus and the other gods**_


	5. My Mother Teaches Me BullFighting

"Clarisse it's your turn" Chris said, holding out the book to his girlfriend, who eyed it with distaste before reluctantly taking it off him.

"**My Mother teaches me Bullfighting,"**

Grover let out a mournful _blah-ha-ha_.

"My Mom taught me how to fix things" Leo said, cocking his head. "She never taught me how to wrestle bulls though. Must have been waiting until I was older."

Piper's eyes went wide and she leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the book cover again. "The Minotaur! Is that after you?"

Jason's eyes widened and he hissed involuntarily, a flash of forbidding running down his spine.

Grover nodded, not trusting himself to speak, his mind lingering on the old guilt that remained from this journey.

"The Minotaur?" Leo repeated craning his head to get a better look at the book too. "Oh yeah, right. Bullfighting; that's clever. Is he wearing tighty whiteys? It's not a good look."

"Shut it" Clarisse growled, sorely tempted to pull Maimer out and show just _why_ it was called that.

**We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

**Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.**

"Shag carpet pants!" Leo hooted with laughter. Thalia snorted loudly unable to help herself. Annabeth closed her eyes and shook her head. Did she REALLY want to know what went on in Percy's head?

**But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.**

Thalia let out a bark of laughter, half covering her face with one hand. Rachel was silently shaking with laughter. Leo was in stitches, ignoring the glare from the annoyed satyr.

**All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"**

**Grover's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

**"Watching me?"**

**"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I**_**am**___**your friend."**

"That's reassuring but it's probably not the best time to explain things" Rachel told Grover.

"Percy would just keep asking questions until I answered" Grover shrugged guiltily. He still felt bad about all of this.

**"Urn ... what**_**are**___**you, exactly?"**

**"That doesn't matter right now."**

"If my best friend was wearing shag carpet pants I'd want to know what's going on too" Leo declared and Piper started to shake with laughter.

**"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

Leo choked on his laughter and Jason managed to crack a smile at the affronted look on Grover's face. Nico sniggered quietly and Chris fought valiantly to keep a straight face. Piper let out an inelegant snort of laughter, cracking under the strain of not laughing and setting Jason off into chuckles.

"Donkey" Grover grumbled. _"Donkey."_

"It's ok Grover" Rachel assured him, fighting a smile of her own. "It's Percy; he's not known to think before he speaks."

Annabeth let out a low vaguely affirmative noise from the back of her throat and straightened her back, letting her spine crack.

Swallowing her own smile, Clarisse scowled at them and continued.

**Grover let out a sharp, throaty**_**"Blaa-ha-ha!"**_

**I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

Leo found himself still snickering and his humour was infectious, making Jason bite his lip and Piper elbow him gently in his ribs.

**"Goat!" he cried.**

**"What?"**

**"I'm a**_**goat**___**from the waist down."**

**"You just said it didn't matter."**

"He's got you there" Leo pointed out.

_**"Blaa-ha-ha!**_ **There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"**

"And then there's Coach Hedge, who'll just trample you for fun" Jason murmured to Leo, who snorted.

**"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

**"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a**_**myth,**___**Percy? Was Mrs Dodds a myth?"**

**"So you**_**admit**___**there was a Mrs Dodds!"**

Thalia rolled her eyes.

**"Of course."**

**"Then why—"**

**"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

**"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

**The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

"Crap" Piper sobered. Percy was twelve for goodness sake. She was luckier than him, at least she was older and had had Jason to save her when she had met a monster. How would a kid demigod, a mortal and a satyr get out of this intact?

**"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

**"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

**"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. **Leo stifled a snicker**. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

"Grover!" Rachel admonished, giving the satyr a severe look. "You shouldn't have said it like that."

Grover nodded meekly.

**"Grover!"**

**"Sorry, Mrs Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

**I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

"You don't need imagination to have weird dreams" Annabeth murmured. Their dreams were bad enough without having to imagine them.

Though what she wouldn't give to have a useful dream _now_ instead of night terrors involving Percy and the danger he could be in.

**My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

"Home sweet home" Chris said under his breath.

**"Where are we going?" I asked.**

**"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. **

Brave woman, Rachel thought, bowing her head.

**"The place your father wanted to send you."**

**"The place you didn't want me to go."**

**"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

**"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

Clarisse shook her head in disgust as she read the words.

**"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."**

Piper winced and noticed Annabeth's expression, sending a chill down her spine.

**"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

**"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

**"You meant 'you.' As in**_**me.**_**"**

**"I meant**_**you,**___**like 'someone.' Not you,**_**you.**_**"**

"That clears that up" Leo coughed.

"Probably not the best time guys" Thalia said dryly.

**"Boys!" my mom said.**

**She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

Piper shivered and shifted closer to Jason.

**"What was that?" I asked.**

**"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question.**

**"Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

There was an uncomfortable shift in the group, being reminded that this was not simple fiction. This had actually happened to a person some of them knew and others had heard about, it wasn't just a story.

**I didn't know where**_**there**___**was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

**Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really**_**hadn't**___**been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

"Wow that took a while there" Thalia rolled her eyes. Clarisse agreed and kept reading. Idiot son of Poseidon.

**Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling**_**boom!**_** And our car exploded.**

"What happened?" Rachel jolted forward. Nico jerked too, dark eyes narrowing.

Thalia exchanged a glance with Annabeth, who nodded darkly.

"Lightning" Jason murmured, flexing the fingers of his left arm. Piper and Leo exchanged looks.

"Dad did that?" Thalia's lips were thin. Nobody dared to say anything and avoided looking up at the clear blue sky.

There was a pause before Clarisse started reading again.

**I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

"That sucks" Leo said unnecessarily before glancing warily at his friend. "You're not zapping me dude."

"I'll try to remember that" Jason deadpanned, making Nico smirk at him.

**I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

Annabeth closed her eyes and took Grover's hand.

**"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

**"I'm okay..."**

**I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

**Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. **

Thalia chuckled slightly at the slightly disgruntled expression on her friend's face, glad for the lightening of her mood.

**"Grover!"**

**He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!**

That broke the building tension for a moment as Leo and Nico started sniggering. Jason covered his mouth with one hand and winked at Piper, who grinned broadly.

"How sweet" Rachel giggled.

"Percy's really very good at breaking up a tense moment isn't he?" Thalia murmured to her two friends.

"I just wish he'd stop using me as the joke." Grover muttered back, with a faint smile.

**Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

Grover groaned. "See?" he complained to Thalia who was laughing at him.

Annabeth shook her head, eyes bright.

"How can you be thinking of food at a time like this?" Rachel demanded, snickering.

"He always says that in his sleep" Annabeth smiled fondly. "It's like him snoring. Besides, he _really _likes to eat."

"And he doesn't gain an ounce the lucky goat" Rachel shook her head. It was so unfair.

**"Percy," my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.**

**I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

Annabeth slowly exhaled as the humour began to drain from the area. Grover was squeezing her hand tightly and she returned the pressure.

**I swallowed hard. "Who is—?"**

**"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

**My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

**"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

_**"What?"**_

**Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

Thalia twitched. Even now she was still sensitive about her time as a tree.

**"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

"What about her?" Piper whispered.

"Mortals can't cross the boundary line-with a few exceptions" Annabeth caught Rachel's eye. "But Sally wouldn't be able to cross."

"He's not going to go" Leo's face was uncharacteristically grim, his tone absolutely certain. If it had been him…he wouldn't have left.

Piper squeezed his wrist.

**"Mom, you're coming too."**

**Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

**"No!" I shouted. "You**_**are**___**coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

**"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

Grover hung his head, his eyes shut, remembering the old failure with crystal clear clarity. His grip tightened on Annabeth's hand and he could feel the weight of Thalia's gaze on him before she put a hand on his other shoulder.

**The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he**_**couldn't**___**be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns …**

"Are horns" Clarisse muttered. Get with the program Jackson!

**"He doesn't want**_**us**_**," my mother told me. "He wants**_**you.**___**Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

**"But..."**

**"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

**I got mad, then—mad at my mother, at Grover the goat,**

Grover grunted at that and Thalia grinned faintly. "At least he didn't say donkey" she whispered, troubled by his melancholy.

**At the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

Clarisse growled quietly. Good grief. _This_ was the punk that had mortally insulted the Ares cabin?

**I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

**"I told you—"**

**"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

"I was their protector and he was protecting _me_" Grover muttered bitterly.

"And what could you have done against the Minotaur?" Thalia suddenly understood Grover's behaviour and was not about to let her friend blame himself. "He would have killed you."

"I should have been able to help them" Grover said angrily. "If I wasn't so"

"Stop it Grover" Annabeth ordered, listening to the conversation and easily deducing the real problem. Lord of the Wild he was now, but that still didn't stop him from reliving his supposed past failures. "You wouldn't have been able to help Percy or Sally. You would have gotten killed and what would Percy have done then? Everything worked out." Lowering her voice she added "if I'm not allowed to brood, neither are you."

Thalia shot her an amused look but Grover sighed and nodded, straightening.

**I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

**Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

Jason glanced at the satyr and winced at the expression on his face. He sympathised. It wasn't easy when you realised the people you were supposed to be protecting ended up protecting _you_.

**Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of**_**Muscle Man**___**magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear**

"Why underwear?" Leo spoke up, trying not to be affected by the grim atmosphere. "Seriously, that's not cool."

"Would you rather we went out in his birthday suit?" Piper asked pointedly, making Leo groan in protest with the images in his head.

"Maybe he just had to get out of bed to chase him?" Nico suggested. Annabeth looked at him; it sounded like something Percy would say.

"Monsters have beds?" Leo asked stupidly. Clarisse glared at the book and continued through gritted teeth.

**I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny,**

"Sounds funny" Leo muttered as Jason coughed softly.

**Except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

**His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

"It's not something I'd want to meet at twelve" Piper winced. "Or now for that matter."

"He's not a nice monster to face" Annabeth agreed. "But he is predictable. You use strategy instead of strength with him."

"Like what?" Jason asked keenly, looking at the daughter of Athena.

"Make him angry" Annabeth smiled grimly. "He's not very clever. And an angry monster makes mistakes."

Piper absorbed this, filing it away for future reference. She and Leo were amateurs compared to senior campers like Annabeth, Thalia and Clarisse. Even Jason with his memory loss was vastly more superior. Learning from them would help her be a better demigod.

**I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

**I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

**"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.**

"_Very_ clever" Thalia's eyebrows rose as did her estimate of Sally's character.

Rachel nodded in agreement. Sally Jackson was nobody's fool.

**"I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

**"But he's the Min—"**

**"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

"She's smart" Jason spoke quietly, respect for the woman forming. He felt a surge of admiration for her capabilities and sensibilities.

"She knew one day this would happen. She prepared" Annabeth murmured concurrently with Jason, nodding to him. She reluctantly acknowledged she'd been a little unfair to the Roman, resenting his presence here. It wasn't as if it was his fault Hera had done this and took Percy from her. It would be better if she just blamed the Queen of Heaven. That would not be difficult.

**The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

**I glanced behind me again.**

**The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.**

"The Minotaur has poor vision" Annabeth informed the newer campers distractedly. "He has an excellent sense of smell though. He could smell you even if you were fifty feet in the air."

"You've tested this, huh?" Leo asked the Athena camper.

"Percy has" Annabeth smiled grimly. "Even before Gaia, this monster was a fast reformer. I wouldn't be surprised if he's reformed by now."

Grover winced.

"Great" Leo deadpanned.

**"Food?" Grover moaned.**

**"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"**

**"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

"I'm seriously impressed" Rachel raised her eyebrows. "She must have spent years reading up on Greek myths to know as much as she does."

"Probably" Annabeth murmured. Sally loved Percy. Of course she would have learned as much as possible trying to keep him safe.

**As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning.**

"This should be good" Nico grinned wickedly, intuition giving him a good idea of what was about to happen.

**He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

This prompted several people to start laughing, Nico and Leo actually cheering.

_**Not a scratch,**___**I remembered Gabe saying.**

"Oops" Thalia grinned wolfishly. Clarisse smirked at the daughter of Zeus.

**Oops.**

Annabeth snorted.

"Looks like you two think alike" Jason grinned at his sister who groaned.

"Way to be insulting little brother" Thalia narrowed her eyes playfully at him.

"It's true though" Annabeth spoke directly to Jason who was caught a little off guard by her addressing him but hid it well. Annabeth noticed his surprise, but she didn't react to it. "They're so alike it's scary. I once told Percy, before they'd met; that they'd be either best friends or they would have killed each other."

"That's true" Thalia said ruefully, remembering vividly her fight with Percy by the river. Several other campers were obviously recalling it too; Grover flashed a big smile. "I'm glad we decided to be friends though."

Jason nodded, a faint pang of envy needling him as he thought of his sister's friendship with Percy Jackson. He barely knew his sister and Percy Jackson was good friends with her, knowing her better than he did.

Seconds later he felt Piper nudge him and received a sweet smile when he'd turned to look at her. It was amazing how she could read people's moods and he wouldn't put it down to just her Aphrodite talents either.

**"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

Annabeth quirked an eyebrow. Even she hadn't realised the depths of Sally's knowledge. She had been well prepared, or as well as she could have been.

**"How do you know all this?"**

**"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

"She wasn't selfish" Rachel said sadly. It wasn't selfishness to want your child to stay with you."

**"Keeping me near you? But—"**

**Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

**He'd smelled us.**

**The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

**The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

Annabeth leaned against Grover and he held her tight. It didn't matter that this had already happened and they knew the outcome. Percy's absence just made it hard to listen to the events in his perspective.

Piper reached out and took Jason's hand before doing the same for Leo. Both boys were tense and listening to the narration was difficult for them, Leo especially. They both looked at her and when she simply raised her eyebrows daring them to take their hands back; they just shook their heads at each other. Girls.

**My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

**I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

Annabeth gnawed on her thumb, annoyed with herself. She knew what was going to happen for Athena's sake! Why was she so anxious?

**He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

Rachel cringed and scooted closer to Annabeth to rest her head on her shoulder. Only six months ago, this would have been suicidal. Annabeth gave her a half hug, thinking Percy would have been chagrined and mystified that they were so worried about what happened about five years ago almost. It made her want to sock the imaginary Percy in her head and ache for the fact she couldn't smack him right now, that he wasn't holding her like Rachel and Grover were at this moment. It wasn't right without him.

**The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.**

**So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

**The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

Leo tensed. He hoped she would be alright.

**We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

**The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

**"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

"She's very brave" Chris whispered softly. Clarisse gave his knee a squeeze in silent agreement. She would never admit it aloud but Jackson's mother had serious guts.

**But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummelling the air.**

"Jesus!" Leo shot forward, Piper still clinging to his hand.

"Son of a" Nico growled, equally furious, one hand on his blade.

Annabeth shut her eyes, the scene being painted in glorious detail behind her eyelids. That warm, wet, wild night, Percy as he was so many years ago, staring in horror as his mother was having the life squeezed out of her…

**"Mom!"**

**She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

Rachel listened, her eyes wide. Sally lived she knew that, so how…

**Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash and she was simply ... gone.**

"What?" Jason and Piper exclaimed while Leo let out a pained noise. Chris looked flummoxed.

"She's not dead. And the Minotaur can't kill like that anyway" he said.

"Sounds like she was transported somewhere" Nico's eyes were slits.

Thalia nodded slowly; that made sense. Her first thought had been when her Lady had transformed Zoe into a constellation and if that was what happened with Sally. But Sally was alive now so that wasn't possible-unless she had more in common with Sally Jackson than she thought. She hated not knowing what happened-being a tree kept you well out of the loop on camp gossip, for sure.

"Transported where?" Jason asked, keeping a wary eye on his friend. He was more sensitive about his mother's death than had thought. Piper was rubbing his hand soothingly and Leo wasn't even trying to pull away. He told himself to keep a closer eye on his friend.

"Let me read and we'll find out" Clarisse said pointedly, ignoring the looks she got as she turned back. She was just as curious to find out about Jackson's quest as the rest of them, she told herself, and ignored her own concern about what happened to Sally Jackson. She was alive, so she obviously came through this unscathed.

**"No!"**

Leo's shoulders hunched, his mother's death coming to the forefront of his mind. Piper wasn't letting him get away; holding fast whenever he tried to tug his hand free. Her colourful eyes gave him a reproachful look for even trying so he'd given up, not seeing pity in those odd eyes, but rather sympathy and understanding and was keeping him from losing his composure at the face of another camper's loss. He did not want the others to see him so out of control, so Piper kept him grounded, not even at all concerned for the possibility of being hurt holding his hand despite his penchant for accidentally catching fire when his emotions went spiffy. He squeezed her hand hard in silent, heartfelt gratitude for her help even as he hastily checked he wasn't starting to smoke from his moment of weakness.

**Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs Dodds grew talons.**

"Go Percy" Rachel murmured.

**The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

Grover sighed deeply and sniffed. Percy Jackson, the most stupid, reckless, insane _Seaweed Brain_ demigod _ever_, was the greatest friend anyone could ever ask for. He didn't deserve his friend's loyalty.

But by the Gods' he would try.

**I couldn't allow that.**

**I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

**"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

"Oh that's a great line" Nico nodded. Percy was twelve right now, a year younger than he was right now. It was a strange thought and the idea that Percy was once an untrained kid seemed wrong, as if in his head, Percy had always been a powerful, trained and skilled fighter. It was a stupid idea, but somehow, it had stuck with him when he was ten, addicted to MythoMagic and having just been rescued by Percy and his friends. Percy wasn't infallible and it was unfair of him to think so.

"He never was as good as you were with the insults" Thalia told Annabeth.

"Mm hmm" Annabeth agreed noncommittally, resisting taking exception to the past tense use in her sentence. She hadn't the strength to argue right now.

**"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

**I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.**

"Oh Gods" Thalia groaned. She wasn't alone; Rachel and Grover let out near instantaneous groans of their own and Nico held a hand over his eyes as if he couldn't bear to watch.

"Percy's plans suck" Nico groaned.

"Uh-huh" Thalia agreed.

Grover said nothing, loyalty to his friend warring with his agreement to Nico. Percy's plans _really_ sucked.

Piper bit her lip, holding in an inappropriate laugh at the expressions on the older campers faces. She exchanged looks with her friends, before quickly looking away, fighting down her amusement. At least Leo was smiling again.

**I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

**But it didn't happen like that.**

"Of course it didn't" Annabeth sighed. Jason pressed his lips together. He didn't want the blonde girl to take offence at his amusement and run him through with that very sharp and shiny bronze knife.

**The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

**Time slowed down.**

"Eh?" Leo said articulately.

Grover shuddered. His friend wasn't talking about Kronos but Gods that was eerie. Talk about coincidence.

**My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in mid-air, and landing on his neck.**

Jason's eyebrows shot up.

"That's cool" Leo declared. He'd never been able to do something like that.

"Except now what's he going to do?" Piper frowned." Percy doesn't have a weapon, how will he kill him?"

Annabeth smirked slightly.

**How did I do that?**

**I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

Rachel winced and had to stop herself touching her jaw in sympathy.

**The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

**The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. **

"That's appropriate" Leo quipped weakly.

"Likes his puns I think" Piper said quietly.

"He does" Thalia heard and acknowledged the comment.

"So do you" Annabeth poked her in the ribs. Thalia stuck her tongue out at her.

**He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

"Lucky for you Seaweed Brain" Annabeth muttered. It could be incredibly aggravating; the idiot doing incredibly stupid, dangerous things that should have killed him, only to be incredibly lucky and manage to survive by what seemed a complete fluke. For a logical daughter of Athena, it was maddening sometimes. Not to mention panic inducing. She couldn't be completely sure, but she suspected the grey streak of hair she _still_ had from holding up the sky had gotten a few extra hairs already thanks to Percy Jackson. If they actually made it to thirty she would probably look like an old lady.

**Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

Rachel stifled a moan. Did he _have_ to be so graphic?

**"Food!" Grover moaned.**

**The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. **

Grover gulped. He hadn't realised how close he actually came to becoming one with nature. He would have been better off not knowing the details.

**I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light,** **and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—**_**snap!**_

Jason leaned forward, listening intently.

**The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

"Whoa" Leo and Piper said in unison. Jason's eyes went wide.

"How strong _is_ this guy?" Leo asked in awe as Chris cursed softly and Nico chuckled darkly.

"When he needs to be? Very." Annabeth's voice was absolute. She wasn't just talking about physical strength either.

**The monster charged.**

Clarisse read further ahead, as reluctant respect for Jackson unfurled in her chest.

**Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barrelled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

"No way" Leo whistled as the others exclaimed or swore.

"That's incredible" Piper whispered, looking at Jason.

He nodded distractedly, his mind far away.

An untrained demigod, killing a monster like the Minotaur in such a way…that was impressive. Very impressive.

**The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs Dodds had burst apart.**

**The monster was gone.**

"Oh good" Rachel breathed, her heart going out for her poor friend.

**The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm house. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

Grover squeezed Annabeth's hand.

**The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's.**

Annabeth started, grey eyes opening wide.

A princess? _Really?_

Rachel had startled at Annabeth's sudden movement and stared at her. "Is that you he's talking about?" she asked, a huge grin suddenly forming at her friend's face.

Thalia burst out laughing. "Aww" she teased her reddening friend.

"That's soooooo cute!" Rachel cooed excitedly.

Annabeth groaned, trying to fight her embarrassment as well as the warm, giddy feeling she felt at Percy's thought. Maybe finding out what went on in Seaweed Brain's head _wasn't_ that bad of an idea.

"That's really sweet" Piper agreed quietly, ignoring the horrified faces of her two male friends. Maybe….maybe she could find out how Jason felt about her in _their_ book.

Unbeknownst to her, Jason had similar thoughts running through his head at that very same moment and was having a panic attack at the idea of his thoughts being read out aloud. He knew these books were a bad idea!

**They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

"The one what Annabeth?" Nico asked innocently and shrank back at her glare as Chris and Leo sniggered. "Never mind" he said hastily making Thalia and Rachel laugh.

**"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**

"There" Clarisse tossed the book to Leo, who yelped as it hit his ribs with surprisingly painful force.


End file.
